Dragonfly -- The Fig Leaf Edition
by nikkilittle
Summary: In 2017, Alice finds herself a target for assassination. Alternate Universe: a modern, American Alice in a real Wonderland.
1. Chapter 1

Table of Contents:

Chapter 01: "Table of Contents"

Chapter 02: "Prelude"

Chapter 03: "Hatter's Lab"

Chapter 04: "Ouverture"

Chapter 05: "A Personal Little War"

Chapter 06: "The Wizard in His Lab"

Chapter 07: "The Maiden in Metal"

Chapter 08: "A Bad Taste"

Chapter 09: "In the Realm of Shadows"

Chapter 10: "Pitch Black"

Chapter 11: "Escalation"

Chapter 12: "Big Brother at Work"

Chapter 13: "Rain"

Chapter 14: "Havana"

Chapter 15: "I Read the News Today"

Chapter 16: "Hair"

Chapter 17: "Recipe for a Molotov Cocktail"

Chapter 18: "Humpty-Trumpty"

Chapter 19: "American Gulag"

Chapter 20: "Return to Havana"

Chapter 21: "Dead White Girl"

Chapter 22: Sources Consulted

Chapter 23: Preview of "Wastelands"


	2. Chapter 2

Dragonfly

by Nikki Little

"If this is the best that civilization can do for the human, then give us howling and naked savagery. Far better to be a people of the wilderness and desert, of the cave and the squatting-place, than to be a people of the machine and the Abyss."

-Jack London

Chapter 2: "Prelude"

It was in the first year of the Trump administration that I had my first encounter with the tiny insect-like drones that I had been hearing rumors of for years. The homeless camps were as packed as they had been during the Bush years. Eight years of Obama had made no difference at all. I had kept up my nightly raids on grocery stores. Obama had kept me on the FBI's most wanted list, but my only near-deadly encounters had been with local SWAT teams that now occasionally staked out a grocery store on the minuscule chance that I'd show up while they were there. In order to reduce my chances of getting ambushed, I had started raiding other big grocery store chains as well as Cheapmart.

One time I even raided a Saks Fifth Avenue for winter coats. I helped myself to some very expensive Valrhona chocolate while I was there and ended up on full-color high-quality security video. The store executives posted it to YouTube with the rap song "She's Gotta Have Some" playing. They actually paid the royalty to prevent any possible takedown. They also did some video editing to zoom in on my backside several times. Every close-up of my behind came with a graphic of a measuring tape stretched across my behind. Sometimes it's tough being a sort of negative celebrity. I got even, though. Now I hit Saks Fifth Avenue once or twice a year for coats. When I lead a group of homeless on a thieving trip there, we always empty out the chocolate display case. No, it's never locked. Not valuable enough, I guess.

Anyway, after a typical raid of a Target for food and camping supplies, I lingered a bit for a game of chess with one of the local experts in the homeless encampment. The moon was bright enough to play by. Everything was bathed in a silvery twilight. You'd be surprised at the strength of some of the players in homeless encampments. Some of them were chess hustlers who hung around in the city parks during the daytime. I indulged in round after round of speed chess, banging a battered old Jerger chess clock after every move. I lost track of time, and was startled to see the bright red glow of sunrise off in the distance. I continued playing as it had been awhile since I had had a worthy human opponent at chess. As the rich yellow glow of morning washed over the homeless encampment, I saw an odd glint out of the corner of my eye. It was moving lightning fast at me. I whipped out my bowie knife and held it up as I fell backward off my bench to avoid being hit. My bowie knife intercepted the object and knocked it to the ground. It buzzed insect-like, but it was obviously mechanical. Even though it was clearly broken, I was wary and not about to touch it.

"Got any clean glass jars with a lid about?" I asked my chess partner. He got up and ducked into a supply tent. Less than a minute later I had my glass jar with a lid. I placed the glass jar on the ground and knocked the buzzing mechanical device into the jar with my bowie knife and quickly slapped the lid on. I held the glass jar up to the sunlight and peered at the device inside the jar.

"It looks like a dragonfly," observed my chess partner. Indeed it did. It was a drone.

End of Chapter 2

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: "Hatter's Lab"

Hatter peered intently at the mechanical insect entombed in clear lucite under his microscope. I looked around Hatter's lab at all the equipment on the tables lining the walls. On one wall were endless test tubes, bunsen burners, and autoclaves. Bottles of various chemicals filled glass-doored cabinets above the tables. On another wall, I saw all sorts of screw drivers and wrenches for working with mechanical devices. To the left and right of Hatter along the wall in front of me were tables lined up with microscopes and slides. This wall appeared to be primarily for examining water samples. Notebooks lined the shelves underneath the tables. Perhaps twenty desks scattered around without pattern occupied the central area. Each desk had a label on its front indicating what it was used for. I could only imagine how much knowledge Hatter had stuffed into his head.

"This was an assassination drone," announced Hatter in a low, serious tone. "You were lucky. Good thing you didn't touch it after you knocked it down. It contains an autoinjector needle which appears to still be functional. I tested its payload. A lethal dose of cyanide. It appears the Trump administration wants you dead."

The Obama administration had kept me at number one on the FBI's Most Wanted list, but I never experienced any attempts by the federal government to assassinate me. Local governments were another matter. Glory-seeking SWAT teams hung around in grocery stores at night occasionally hoping to defy the statistical odds that I would show up precisely when they were there. Some local police departments definitely wanted me dead. Chicago was the city where I felt I was most likely to be ambushed. New York City cops, on the other hand, had orders not to engage me if they encountered one of my grocery store raids. They were ordered to keep their distance and merely observe.

"You have to respond to this in some way, Alice. You can't simply continue as if nothing happened. Either you quit raiding grocery stores, or you retaliate. What are you going to do?"

I sat down and stared at the wall. All sorts of thoughts raced through my mind. The U.S. government was down in a bunker beneath Washington D.C. and I had no way in. They had been down there in that bunker since I had tossed the Angel's Sword into the Capitol Building in the summer of 2007. There did not exist a single photograph, video, or even drawing of the inside of the bunker. The federal government was beyond my reach. So how could I respond to the assassination attempt? Just quitting and retreating to Wonderland was out of the question. I was too angry to consider that.

"I'm going to have to think about that, Hatter. I have already decided against doing nothing, but what to do is an open question."

The Trump administration had only been in office for a little longer that a hundred days, and it was already obvious that Trump, who had campaigned as an economic nationalist, was nothing more than a tool for corporate interests. The federal House of Representatives, at his urging, had just voted to replace Obamacare with an even greater monstrosity that would cost millions of people the health insurance that Obamacare had provided them. The one great thing that Obamacare did was the vast expansion of Medicaid in states that opted to take it. Homeless people in those states were actually getting medical care. Would Trump's replacement bill kill the Medicaid expansion? The results in the homeless encampments would be catastrophic. I had already been moving sick homeless people out of states that didn't expand Medicaid to Medicaid Expansion states just so that they could get medical care. I despised the Trump administration even more than I despised the phony progressivism of the Obama administration. What did I feel? Rage. Murderous rage. The U.S. government was in the control of barbarians. I needed to calm down. I turned and walked out of Hatter's Lab with a silent good-bye wave and walked down to the Gnome Bar for a period brandy. I usually only drank the period brandies in the middle of a period, but today I needed a period brandy just to calm my nerves. I didn't want to turn into my rage persona just because I was in a foul mood.

Cheshire showed up at the Gnome Bar to keep me company as I sipped my period brandy. That cat seemed to have an uncanny knack of knowing just when I needed some company. He ordered an iced catnip tea for himself.

"Sometimes the best way to deal with a dilemma is to let it simmer for awhile," said Cheshire. "Take a day or two to figure out what to do next."

I made no grocery store raids that night or the next. Meanwhile Hatter was hard at work on a full-body metal fabric undergarment for me that was needle-proof. I needed to find a messenger to the Trump administration, and I had just the person in mind.

End of Chapter 3

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: "Ouverture"

Barack Obama sat on the concrete near the chairs and tables of an outdoor cafe. We were right next to some trees and a bit hidden from view. He was looking a little green. Most people do after their first trip in one of my mental portals. An old-fashioned smoke portal would have been a much gentler ride, but that would have required my physical presence exposing me to the risk of being shot by Secret Service agents. I had been sitting in a sports bar uptop in Montgomery, Alabama watching the news on TV and nursing a mint julep. Barack Obama appeared live in an interview. It was just the moment I was waiting for.

"Perhaps a glass of mint tea to sooth the stomach?" I asked.

Barack Obama looked up at me.

"Wearing a disguise? I know who you are. I'm not armed. I knew it was only a matter of time."

"Take off your suit," I commanded.

"I'm not armed," Mr. Obama repeated a bit indignantly.

"I'm not looking for arms. I'm looking for GPS trackers and audio transmitters. Spyware, in other words."

Mr. Obama rolled his eyes, took off his suit, and held up his arms for me to pat him down.

"Just like what air travelers endure in U.S. airports," I reminded him. I did not enjoy the crotch search – not at all – but I felt I had to be careful. I checked the suit last. I tried to hurry because I was out in public. A bit hidden by the trees from most of the customers, but still in view. I removed the battery from his cell phone and dropped it into my left velcro-sealed dress pocket. The empty pocket. I didn't want the cell-phone battery contacts to touch anything metal.

"Clean," I said. "Sit down in a chair and I'll buy us some drinks. I'll give you the cell phone battery back later."

"I can pay for my own drinks."

"Not here you can't," I said. "We're at my favorite outdoor cafe in Havana, Cuba. The fish tacos are perfect. No, the fish aren't from the Gulf of Mexico. The Cubans send their fishing fleets out into the Atlantic, now. Nobody in Cuba wants oil-contaminated fish. They won't even serve it to tourists."

"You have Cuban pesos?"

"I have Cuban convertible pesos. One convertible peso is worth exactly one U.S. dollar."

A waitress saw me and came over. She didn't know that I was the "American Robin Hood." Every time I came I wore a different outfit and a different wig. To her, I was just another tourist.

"And what would you two business people like?" she asked in perfect British English. Perhaps she saw me patting down the former president and assumed some big business deal was about to take place.

"Fish tacos, iced hibiscus tea, and a mint julep." I looked at Barack Obama hinting for him to order.

"Tell her what you want," I said.

"Fish tacos and iced black tea," said Mr. Obama.

"No alcohol?" I teased.

"Not now," Mr. Obama replied.

Mr. Obama's eyes followed the waitress as she walked away.

"She is quite shapely, isn't she?" I teased. Valeria, the waitress, was short, dusky-skinned, rather plump, and very curvaceous. She had long black hair down past her shoulders. I was quite sure she was the Cuban feminine ideal. "Cuban men don't like their women skinny."

"So you must get hit on a lot down here, then?"

I knew what he was hinting at. "Yes, I get hit on a lot by local men." Mr. Obama suddenly looked perplexed.

"The waitress didn't recognize me!"

"Imagine that," I said. "We are in Cuba. There are a lot of men here who look a lot like you. You would be recognized eventually if you walked around. Especially in that suit."

"So what's our business, here? You must have something important to say to me to pull this stunt."

I looked around to see if anyone was seated close enough to overhear. No one. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. Not rush hour. Not for tourists, anyway. Mr. Obama and I had this little corner of the outdoor cafe to ourselves. "I do indeed. I need a personal messenger to the new president of the United States. I just experienced an assassination attempt in a homeless encampment."

"You were obviously lucky. May I ask how the attempt was carried out?"

"A tiny drone that looks just like a dragonfly. If you look closely at it, you can see that it's mechanical. I knocked the drone down, knocked it into a glass jar, and had our Hatter examine it in his labs. He said it contained a tiny auto-injector needle loaded with cyanide. Surely you know something about those dragonfly drones."

"They were designed to be used by police in hostage situations. They were camera drones. They carried only miniature cameras and a wireless capability like a smartphone. They were remote-controlled, and their range was essentially anyplace with cell phone towers. Naturally they were also used by the U.S. military."

"You can talk about this freely? It's not classified?"

"Officially it's classified, but Wikileaks exposed the dragonfly drones quite some time ago. They're an open secret. Pictures of them have been published in Wired Magazine. They were never used as weapons. The cyanide-loaded needle is something new."

"Never before used as a weapon? So this is something the Trump administration dreamed up?"

"Correct. During my time in office, the dragonfly drones were barely capable of carrying camera equipment. Apparently miniaturization has progressed enough to allow these drones to now carry a weapon in addition to a camera. So what message do you want me to carry, as if I didn't know?"

"The message is this. The assassination attempt means all-out war. I don't possess any giant bombs or any of what you would call weapons of mass destruction, but I do possess the ability to retaliate."

Valeria brought our fish tacos and drinks. Mr. Obama again watched her as she walked away. I looked around again to see if anyone was within eavesdropping distance. No one really close enough to overhear. I made sure to speak in a low, barely audible volume. Mr. Obama spoke first.

"She has hips like Michelle."

"You like big hips?"

"I'm a black dude. We all like big hips," said Mr. Obama with a mischievous smile. I wondered if he was joking. Merely making fun of a stereotype of black men. "So what can you do to retaliate? Mr. Trump obviously thinks you're unable to respond in any meaningful manner."

"I'll take you there now. A little demonstration. I need to pay for our food before we leave. After all, I'd like to come back."

Mr. Obama chuckled at that. "Very practical to only pay when you're coming back."

"Contrary to what you might think, I try to pay as often as I can. My thefts are mostly limited to the homeless raids I lead on grocery stores. Often I can't resist snatching some chocolate for myself. I didn't get these hips and this butt from mushrooms and rice."

"Chocolate?" Mr. Obama laughed. "That's the only thing you steal for yourself?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

The waitress walked by and handed me the check denominated in convertible pesos. Only people with convertible pesos could afford to eat in this cafe. Four pesos for each order of fish tacos and one peso for each glass of tea. The mint julep was five pesos. I gave the waitress a twenty convertible peso note. "Keep the rest," I said. The waitress practically danced away.

"You just tipped her a week's salary, didn't you?"

"The average Cuban state worker's salary, the last time I checked, was around thirty dollars per month. I just tipped her five dollars."

"We're ready to go now?"

"We're ready, but I have one question for you before we leave. Why did you put me at number one on the FBI most wanted list? You know I'm not in the same category as Osama Bin Laden or Timothy McVeigh."

"Well, there was that little stunt in the United States Senate."

"I literally took a bath in rage potion. It was an accident."

"You did kill one Capitol Police Officer."

"He had a gun pointed at my head and was about to pull the trigger. I didn't have the ability then to create a portal with my mind. Nowadays I could have simply teleported myself out of the way."

"I don't remember seeing you before I dropped through the portal."

"I don't have to be physically present anymore to create a portal."

"You were number one on the FBI most wanted list, but all of us in the intelligence community agreed that it was best not to try to assassinate you. Might cause riots. I issued an executive order for intelligence operatives merely to observe you and not engage you in any way. Needless to say, this executive order did not apply to local police departments. Local control and all that. Also you did have fans in high places. My two daughters thought you ought to be in comic books."

I got up and motioned to Mr. Obama to follow me into the small grove of trees next to our table. We were out of sight and I opened a portal. Exit stage right.

End of Chapter 4

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.

Version 2


	5. Chapter 5

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Chapter 5: "A Personal Little War"

I dropped us both through one of my mental portals and shoved a garbage can in front of Mr. Obama after we emerged from the portal. Fortunately, he didn't need it.

"Where are we?" he asked. "Looks like someone's bedroom."

"It's my bedroom. I need some equipment from this dresser."

I opened two drawers in the dresser at the foot of my bed, my equipment dresser, and pulled out a pair of binoculars which I hung around my neck, and a safety harness. The kind worn by construction workers.

"What's that for?"

"Where we're going, you're going to need it."

I buckled the anchor end of the safety harness around my waist and then looked at Mr. Obama realizing that he didn't appear to have hips. I looked him over carefully, and then decided that I had no alternative but to wrap the safety harness around his chest just under the armpits.

"There's no possibility that this safety harness could slip over my hips, but your hips? That's an open question. Sorry, but under the armpits is the safest place on a tall skinny stick like you."

Mr. Obama looked genuinely concerned.

"Just where are we going where I have to wear a safety harness?"

"Here," I said, yanking him through another mental portal. I made a silent plea for him not to puke.

"Okay, so we're up in a tree. Why the harness?"

"Can you see the ground?"

"No. Too many branches in the way."

"Good."

"Are we high up?"

"Try not to think about it. We're in the top of a lodgepole pine. Stay exactly where you are. These aren't exactly the sturdiest of branches."

Mr. Obama suddenly had a funny look on his face. "Aren't lodgepole pines those very tall pines with straight unbranched trunks that often go thirty feet high before you see the first branch?"

"Yup."

"Just how high up are we?"

"High enough not to be seen by the closed-circuit TV cameras scattered everywhere in these trees in the lowest branches. The cameras are all pointed down. We're way above the cameras in the only place where we can go unseen. Try not to speak too loudly just in case there are microphones down there."

"The wind whipping through these branches would make microphones useless, at least at this moment. We're really high up, aren't we?"

"At least sixty feet. Thus the safety harness. Hang on to that branch and don't let go."

"Why are we here?"

"Look straight ahead in the gap between the branches. See that complex of buildings down there?"

"Yup. What are they?"

"You don't recognize them?"

"Nope."

"I think you're playing dumb. That's the NSA Utah Data Center. And we're on a mountainside way off in the distance."

"Why are we here?"

"I'm going send Mr. Trump a message. I'm going to destroy those buildings. I'm going to create subsidence under those buildings by opening one portal after another deep below them until the stress on the foundations creates cracks that will send everyone inside fleeing outside. Don't worry. I'll wait until everyone is outside before I finish off the buildings."

"That data center is there for a purpose. It's to keep the United States safe from terrorist attack."

"If that's what it was really for, it wouldn't be hoovering up all digital communication in the United States and around the globe. You would still be engaging in targeted surveillance of the type that existed before George W. Bush took advantage of the September eleventh attack to push through the Patriot Act and target everyone. The purpose of that data center is to gather information on every American so as to blackmail him or her in the future if he or she ever becomes a political pain-in-the-butt. Donald Trump during his campaign was a case-in-point. Anybody else would have been destroyed by all the bad publicity of events in his past. Donald Trump is still a case-in-point. All this Russia stuff. You'd think talking to a Russian official were illegal in this country."

"You sound like a Trump supporter."

"You must be kidding. Look at me. I'm female."

"There are women who support Trump."

"Never mind Trump. I came here to send a message to him. You're trying to distract me, aren't you? Don't want me to destroy your little panopticon down there."

"It was worth a try."

I held the binoculars up to my eyes and began opening my standard door-size portals deep underneath the buildings in the NSA complex off in the distance. Unlike Caterpillar, I did not possess the ability to create portals of any size I wanted. I wondered how many door-sized portals deep underground of the buildings would be required to make the walls crack. I began to count aloud, which annoyed Mr. Obama greatly.

"What you're doing will endanger the security of the United States," huffed the former president.

"Get real. They're drowning in data. They've got so much data they don't have time to sort through it all. If you were serious about terrorism, you'd still be using William Binney's old ThinThread program which was targeted surveillance and respected the privacy of innocent Americans."

Mr. Obama started to open his mouth and then shut it. He knew the futility of arguing with me. I had a reputation for stubbornness known around the world.

I had lost track of how many portals I had opened. Mr. Obama grinned. He had stopped my counting. I continued to peer through the binoculars and, after about ten minutes, I saw people streaming out of all the buildings. I stopped creating portals and waited until people stopped streaming out the doors. I didn't want any buildings to collapse while people were still inside. After a few minutes of no more people streaming out the doors, I restarted opening portals. In a few minutes, buildings started collapsing at the NSA Utah Data Center. In a few moments, they were all merely piles of rubble.

End of Chapter 5

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: "The Wizard in His Lab"

I dropped Obama and myself through a mental portal into my bedroom in Wonderland and unbuckled him from the safety harness. I unbuckled myself and returned the harness to the drawer. For a moment I considered taking him to the Gnome Bar, but the possibility that he had some tracking device on him that I had missed deterred me. I dropped Obama through a portal back to his interview spot, handing him his cell-phone battery at the last moment. I dropped myself through a portal straight to Hatter's lab where I found him still working on a metal-fabric body armor outfit that covered the entire body up to the neck. Hatter grinned at me as I appeared.

"You're just in time for your fitting! Take off your dress!"

"Anything to get me naked, eh, Hatter?"

Hatter pouted. "You're not exactly the type I most desire to see unclothed. Give me some credit. I am asking you to disrobe for purely professional purposes! I've made some progress on the metal fabric armor. It's lightweight and nearly undetectable under the clothes. No thicker than a cotton spring dress. It's puncture-proof, but it won't protect you from injury."

"Won't protect me from injury? How is that possible?"

"It will protect your skin from being punctured by a needle, but the force of the impact can still drive the fabric down into your skin. In other words, it will save you from cyanide, but not from having a big hole punched into your skin."

"Lovely. Still, it's a vast improvement over going out unprotected. I take it that there will be no protection for my face?"

"Practicality makes that impossible. You need to be able to see, to speak, to eat, and to drink. You also need unimpeded hearing. I could include a sort of hoodie to protect your neck and back of your head, but you'd have to wear it over your hair or cut your hair. Not really practical. I have a hard time imagining you cutting your hair. You've always been quite prideful of that shoulder-length copper-red hair."

"I want the neck protection. You're calling me vain, aren't you?"

"Well, you always have been quite prideful of your looks. And for the past couple of years, of your body as well. Especially your chest. Take your dress off so I can measure you for the metal fabric outfit. It will have to be very tight-fitting to offer maximum protection."

"Don't make a corset out of it, Hatter. I still need to breathe!"

"Off with the dress!"

I removed my dress and Hatter got busy with the measuring tapes like a skilled tailor. Considering that he made his own clothes, I'd say that he actually was a highly skilled tailor. He was quite professional in measuring me. No remarks about the size of my bust, my hips, my butt, my thighs, or the bulge right below my belly button.

"Come back in a day and I might have a prototype for you to wear. In the meantime, no appearances in homeless encampments. Too dangerous without any protection."

"I've been staying out of the homeless encampments. I prep the grocery store for a raid by driving out the employees with the shrunken head, and then I open a portal unannounced in the homeless encampment. Some people do show up for the unannounced raids. Four minutes and I hurry them back through the portal. Then I disappear. Those dragonfly drones would be much too expensive to deploy in every big box hypermarket in the country. I can also imagine that no commercial business would be pleased to have a cyanide dart flying around in their store. Even after hours when only the stockers, cleaners, and mule drivers were inside."

"Sensible. I knew you wouldn't take unnecessary risks. You did when you were young and reckless during Wonderland's civil war."

"That was a long time ago, Hatter. Do you still have the lucite-encased Dragonfly Drone?"

"Yes, I have it. I've done all the examination I can of it. You want someone else to examine it?"

"How about the Cuban DI? Our friends in Cuba could take the Dragonfly Drone to them for a thorough examination. I'm sure that they would have far more equipment than you do. Maybe they'll find a weakness in the drone to exploit, or even figure out how to hack into it and disable it."

"Don't get your hopes up. There's also the risk that they might get the idea of using that thing against their own population. Never underestimate the ability of a bad idea to spread. Cuba is far more egalitarian than the United States, but it is no democracy. In the meantime, you might want to ready yourself for wearing what is essentially a metal corset."

"Should I wear my lingerie with that metal fabric or not?"

"Metal fabric alone. The metal fabric will be your lingerie. A sort of full-body girdle."

"I'm going to look like a stuffed sausage in that thing aren't I?"

"You look like a stuffed sausage with nothing on at all."

"Good! Then I won't have to worry about you lusting after me." I turned and walked away from Hatter, coming down hard on my heel to make my butt bounce. I picked up my dress and pulled it back over my head, tightening the waist sash.

"Peep show's over, Hatter! See you tomorrow!"

End of Chapter 6

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: "The Maiden in Metal"

Hatter found me in the Gnome Bar the next evening swilling iced hibiscus tea and informed me that my new puncture-proof metal fabric suit was ready.

"The fabric is an adaptation of a sharksuit. To be most effective at resisting needles, the fabric will need to be stretched as tight as a trampoline."

I winced. "You mean the suit will be a metal corset."

"Well, maybe not that bad." Hatter hemmed and hawed. I knew it was going to be bad.

"Now?" I asked.

"Ready when you are," replied Hatter, trying to sound chipper.

I followed Hatter along glumly through Wonderland Woods toward his castle. I could have just opened a portal and walked through, but I wasn't in any hurry to arrive. Besides, it had been awhile since I had just taken a sight-seeing walk through Wonderland Woods. The Woods were just as beguiling and enchanting as ever: full of colorful butterflies, strange and wondrous plants, and, of course, patches of killer mushrooms. The killer mushroom patches were fenced off for the protection of gnome children. No, no blood roses anymore in Wonderland. I had long ago killed off entirely those monsters. I most enjoyed the giant orchids which "hugged" you as you walked past. The vanilla, jasmine, and citrus scents of the various orchids rubbed off onto your clothes and lasted hours after your encounter.

Hatter had left open the front doors to his castle, and I followed him inside. His living room just inside the door and his library through a door on the right in the living room were the most interesting parts of Hatter's castle to me. I walked through the door at back, through the dining room and kitchen, and toward the stairway up to Hatter's laboratory.

"Here we are!" announced Hatter, pointing to a metal-fabric body suit draped over a chair.

"That body suit looks awfully small," I remarked in a low, somewhat anxious voice. "I don't think I'm going to fit in that. It looks like Michelle Pfeiffer's catsuit from Batman Returns."

"Of course you'll fit in it!" announced Hatter cheerfully. "I have two gnomes and a crowbar ready to assist!"

"That's not funny." Hatter was joking about the crowbar, but it turned out there really were two gnome men ready to assist with stuffing me into the suit. I took off my dress, folded it in half, and laid it over the back of a chair.

I laid down on a clean gym pad on the floor and took off my my bra, panties, and socks. A gnome man laid my lingerie and socks on the chair with the dress. Hatter folded back a metal fabric overlay and unzipped the back. I placed my feet into the metal fabric suit and began to wiggle my way in, my breasts and roll below the waist jiggling and bouncing all the way. Mercifully, no one made any remarks. My hips were the first obstacle. It took both of the gnome men to help me squish my fleshy hips inside the suit. My hips went through the suit like a pig through a python. My second obstacle was my bust. I had to squash and stuff my breasts underneath the neckline where they proceeded to impede my further entry into the metal-fabric suit for the rest of the way. My boobs got pushed up to my chin as I struggled to get my feet into the bottom of the suit.

"Hatter, this isn't practical. I can't do this every night before a raid." I was almost in.

"Pity you aren't still flat-chested," observed Hatter. "It would be a lot easier for you to get in."

"You still wish I were a 100-pound stick, don't you? I'm quite fond of the boobs." I shoved on my boobs inside the fabric trying to get them down into the proper place. Good thing the metal fabric was soft as silk inside. I wondered how that was even possible. Hatter huffed and puffed as he struggled to zip up the back. My breasts inside the metal fabric shrank before my eyes. When he finished zipping me in, I felt my hips and butt and was startled to find that the rounded fullness that made me look so good in a dress was completely gone.

I stood up and looked in a mirror. This thing was worse than a corset. It was a full-body tourniquet. Everything was so squished in that I actually looked like a tiny gymnast in her Olympic outfit. I wondered what would happen if I sneezed. I wondered if anyone would recognize me when dressed.

"I...can't...breathe!" Then I fainted.

End of Chapter 7

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: "A Bad Taste"

Cheshire was over in a corner pouring iced catnip tea down his throat, swirling it in his mouth, and then spewing it out into a hand sink. Yes, he could actually hold a cup. He used his front paws and extended claws somewhat like fingers. My head felt light and the swirling of the ceiling slowed down.

"He's trying to get the taste out of mouth," Hatter commented with a blank expression on his face.

"What happened to him?" I asked. The ceiling stopped swirling.

"You," said Hatter. Hatter looked over at Cheshire reaching for another glass of iced catnip tea on a tray. Cheshire had to use both front paws to pick up a glass. A gnome scurried up with another tray containing six glasses of iced catnip tea. The gnome looked at me and gestured that he would bring me a glass of tea.

"What did I do?"

"The damn piece-of-shit Chinese zipper in the metal fabric suit got stuck. We couldn't pry you out of that metal fabric suit no matter what we did. Lindsay took one look at you passed out on the floor and ran out into Wonderland Woods to hunt down Cheshire."

"Lindsay did something for me?" Lindsay was Hatter's wife. Lindsay Lohan. Rescued from the clutches of the crazy American legal system to provide an object of lust for Hatter. So he wouldn't pay any attention to Arianne and me. Lindsay Lohan. So perpetually drunk that she actually married Hatter. Maybe Hatter looks handsome to blurred vision. A gnome approached with a tray with several varieties of iced tea. I picked up a glass of what I knew to be orange-spice black tea. The gnome grinned at me and I wondered why.

"The sight of you in that tight metal fabric outfit must have dredged up some awful memory of being stuffed into a corset herself in the past. She came back with Cheshire in about eight minutes. She must have run all the way. I was seriously considering trying a wire cutter to get you out, but I was afraid of stabbing you with the device."

"What did Cheshire do?"

"He slipped his fangs underneath the metal fabric and tugged the fabric down very slowly to avoid slipping a fang into you. He was very, very careful to avoid piercing you with one of his fangs. He gave me the funniest look when he first saw you on the floor. I had to explain fast. He did ask me if the metal fabric contains lead before he put it in his mouth."

"Does it?"

"Of course not! Do you think I'd wrap you up in toxic metal?"

"What is it made of?"

"Titanium. Very expensive. Non-toxic. At least to humans. No studies I know of on cats, though."

"So he spits and spits and spits."

"Because of the bad taste, I suppose."

I walked over to Cheshire. He was still spitting. I gave him a kiss on his furry face. Once again I had been rescued by Cheshire. My furry guardian angel. How many times was this? He grinned sheepishly at me and continued spitting. I walked back over to Hatter. My head still felt full of fog.

"It was quite comical to watch him pull the tight metal fabric off you. When he pulled the fabric past your boobs, they popped up like a pair of jack-in-the-boxes and whopped him in the face. It was fascinating to watch all that flesh on your hips spill out as he pulled the fabric down."

"You had me squished down to the size of a skeleton!" My head still felt light.

"Lush plus-size model curves stuffed into a Hollywood starlet suit. I'll never try that again."

"So you're going to abandon the metal fabric body suit?"

"No, I'm going to test the protective properties of a metal fabric suit cut to the same size as your lingerie. A thicker suit would be completely impractical as it would impede your movements to an unacceptable extent. A looser-fitting metal fabric suit won't protect you at all from being punctured, but it probably, I hope, will protect you from the cyanide in the needle of those assassin drones."

"How long do I have to wait?" I considered lying down.

"A day at least. Maybe two."

A gnome approached me with another tray offering glasses of various iced teas. He was still grinning. Why was he grinning? At that moment, like a slap in the face, I realized that I was still naked. Hatter burst out laughing.

"I was wondering when you would notice!"

I decided to do only one grocery store raid that night. One of the smaller homeless encampments. Down inside the subway tunnels of New York City. A long-abandoned subway station on an active line. This homeless encampment would be safe for me to walk into. The dragonfly drones depended on solar energy to maintain power. I was going into a realm of dim lights and shadows.

End of Chapter 8

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.

Edit #2 for Fig-Leaf Edition Only


	9. Chapter 9

"The worst illiterate is the political illiterate. He hears nothing, sees nothing, takes no part in political life. He doesn't seem to know that the cost of living, the price of beans, of flour, of rent, of medicines all depend on political decisions. He even prides himself on his political ignorance, sticks out his chest and says he hates politics. He doesn't know, the imbecile, that from his political non-participation comes the prostitute, the abandoned child, the robber and, worst of all, corrupt officials, the lackeys of exploitative multinational corporations." -Bertolt Brecht

Chapter 9: "In the Realm of Shadows"

It was three o'clock in the morning when I arrived at the abandoned Worth Street subway platform in New York City with my bag of raid equipment. Dim lights shone along the silent tracks casting shadows everywhere I looked. A pillar with "Worth" marked in black ink stood in front of me. It was covered from head to foot in curlicues of black spray-paint. Graffiti covered the walls everywhere I looked. There was no platform on the opposite side of the tracks or in the center. Just the platform on my left and tracks on my right. Rusted metal beams across the ceiling held up whatever was above.

I approached the part of the platform with antiquated metallic cages holding light bulbs along the inner side of the platforms. All of the bulbs were lit. The Worth Street platform may have been abandoned since 1962, but someone was still doing routine maintenance such as replacing bulbs.

A Nighthawk explosive gases detector was plugged into the bottom plug-in of an electrical outlet at the edge of the public area of the platform. The red digital display shone eerily amidst the dim light and shadows. A cord ran from the top plug-in of the electrical outlet to a tiny dormitory refrigerator sitting on top of a wooden pallet. Electrical tape against the wall held the cord up off the floor. I could see a second tiny dormitory refrigerator also sitting on a pallet plugged into the top plug-in of the electrical outlet at the opposite end of the public area of the platform. Its cord was also held up off the floor by electrical tape on the wall. Another detector was plugged into the bottom plug-in of the outlet. Probably a smoke detector.

Farther back on both sides of the public area of the platform, I saw two-burner portable electric cooktops sitting on beat-up wooden tables. Their short cords were plugged into electrical outlets. I noticed that one plug-in by each table was free. Hand-made wooden shelving stood by both tables holding non-perishable foods such as spaghetti, rice, dry beans, instant mashed potatoes, and teabags in big covered glass jars with taped labels. One shelf was full of cans of evaporated milk and small, plastic bowls stacked up. The bottom shelves on both sides had Ajax dish liquid, bottles of Clorox, bars of soap, boxes of powdered floor cleaner, and big, plastic tubs that I thought might be for washing dishes. I had seen pictures in newspapers of Peace Corps Volunteers in Africa washing dishes in a row of three big plastic tubs. Soapy water in the first, clear rinse in the second, and sanitizer in the third. I noticed small containers of salt, pepper, oregano, basil, sage, and thyme on the tables. I wondered what was in the refrigerators and asked to take a look in the one closest to me. Eggs and carrots. Nothing else except ice in the small trays in the tiny freezer area.

In the back of the public area I saw a cement stairway which looked as if someone had spilled a bucket of black paint at the top of the stairs. The black discoloration ran down the left side of all the steps all the way to the floor. A dimly lit restroom was visible to the right of the stairway. Trash was swept into corners near the stairway. Just to the left of the stairway was a graffiti which announced "Welcome to Hell" above an image of the iconic Big Boy holding aloft a plate of roasted rat with an apple in its mouth. I felt a shiver. I had walked into what looked like the set of a horror movie.

Feral cats, wide awake and on the hunt, roamed everywhere both on the platform and down along the tracks. Three dozen total perhaps? Several of them were feasting on large rats. I guessed that the evaporated milk was for the cats. Perhaps twenty-five people slept on what looked like army surplus cots. Two guards posted across the tracks approached me. Both of them were carrying hunting rifles. I stood still and waited for them. The taller guard spoke first.

"You're looking well. It's been about a year since you were last here. As you can see, there are more of us down here. I think that there were only ten of us when you showed up for the first time. We were really surprised. We never thought you'd show up in a place like this. Nine of the original ten are still here."

"What happened to the tenth?" I asked.

"At first, we thought she had found a way out of this place. She just disappeared. Then people from another platform, maybe the 91st Street platform, showed us a newspaper article of a body discovered floating in the East River. No ID on the body. The newspaper had a drawing of the face. We knew it was her. We just knew."

"I'm sorry. Almost every large homeless camp I've visited has had at least one suicide. People keep hoping the politicians will do something positive, but nothing ever happens. People give up."

"You came to do a raid. I'll go wake up our day runners. They go uptop to the food banks. Our night runners are out scavenging through dumpsters. You'd be amazed what grocery stores throw away."

The shorter guard came back with three day runners. "I'll go see if I can find some volunteers who don't mind losing a little sleep for food that they get to choose." In a few minutes he came back with seven more people. "Ten enough?" he asked.

"The number is up to you. I'm willing to take everyone through the portal if you want."

"You'll take all of us?" The shorter guard seemed incredulous.

"I've done raids with as many as forty people. Of course, those people knew exactly what to do. Remember that we've got only four minutes inside a store. After three minutes and fifteen seconds, I use a loud horn to get everyone back. Forty-five seconds to get everyone back through the portal. I count as people go through. Every once in a while, somebody doesn't make it to the portal. At four minutes, I go through and close the portal. Don't worry, I'll explain how a raid is done before we leave. There are only a few things to remember."

In a few moments, I had everyone living here except the two guards ready to go. Everyone agreed that it was best if the two guards remained behind. Nobody here had any qualms about stealing food. Before we went on our raid, however, one member of the group had downloaded several videos on YouTube that she felt I absolutely needed to see before we went on a raid. Curious, I indulged her.

"People in New York City have been seeing weird insects inside grocery stores. Insects they had never seen inside grocery stores before." She showed me several cell phone videos of what appeared to be dragonflies inside grocery stores. I heaved a great sigh.

"Thank you for showing me those videos. Those were not insects. They were drones waiting for me to show up."

"What could those tiny little things do to you?"

"They carry auto-injector needles filled with cyanide. They're for me." I paused for a moment. "You have internet down here?"

"There's an independent coffee shop almost directly above our heads. They run an open wireless network and never shut it off."

I looked at our crowd. "Change of plans everyone. We're going to raid a Cheapmart in a foreign country. Great Britain suit everyone? It's still English on the labels." No complaints. If anything, everyone seemed a little excited to see something besides an American grocery store. I still needed to give my pre-raid speech to everyone.

"Every single raid I do follows the same formula. First, I open a smoke portal and toss through the shrunken head of the duchess which releases a non-toxic but hallucinogenic gas that makes people see monsters. One whiff and everybody runs. It takes 30-60 seconds for the gas to fill the store depending on its size. It dissipates quickly. After 90 seconds I go through the portal first and everyone going on the raid should follow. If something has gone wrong such as cops showing up, I slam the portal shut on you. I return and we choose some other target to raid. I count heads as you come through the portal. The portal will have opened up next to an aisle that has gym bags on the shelves. The portal will remain open the entire time that we are in the target store. I always scout out target stores in advance. Grab a gym bag. This is what you will use to carry your loot. Head immediately to your pre-determined target and fill your gym bag full. When your gym bag is full, head immediately back to the portal and go through. Don't be dainty. Grab. Be quick about it. We all have to be out after four minutes. At three minutes fifteen seconds, my timer alarm will go off. I will blow on a very loud horn. That means everybody out immediately. Run to the portal and go through. Immediately step to the left or right and get out of the way so that you don't get run over. I count heads as you go through. I leave last after everyone else is through. Then I close the portal with a jackbomb. Stand back when I do it. Afterwards, do whatever you do to unwind after something stressful. I usually leave at this time."

Everyone looked at each other. The original group living on this platform who had all done the first raid picked one or two "newbs" to come with them. I still had to distribute the usual disposable rubber gloves and ski masks.

"Everyone has to wear these disposable gloves during the raid. Wait until you have returned to this platform to dispose of them. Don't toss them in a garbage can inside the target store. Your fingerprints are on the inside of the gloves! Everyone must cover their face with a ski mask during the raid. You can keep the ski mask. I'll give you all a few minutes to decide what your targets are for the raid. A few of you should grab large bulk bags of rice and packages of spaghetti. Don't be delicate. Sweep the boxes of spaghetti off the shelves into your gym bags. Don't stop to pick up the ones that miss. Avoid highly perishable foods. One of you should grab for eggs since you have refrigerators. Check to see how much space you have available. Don't take the time to check for broken eggs. Just grab. You can check the eggs later. Someone should grab for canned soups. Remember that cans are heavy. Leave the cans for people who can lift 100 pounds. Grab for bulk packs whenever you can. No expensive shiny stuff. Remember that this is a form of political protest. If you grab for an expensive laptop computer, I'll drop you immediately back on the platform. In homeless encampments above, I've dropped people into creeks in summer. No expensive shiny stuff. I mean it. Chromebooks are okay. So are netbooks if you can find one. Now you should decide what your targets are."

I passed out the disposable rubber gloves and the ski masks while the raiders decided what to grab for. I also put the disposable gloves on my own hands, but no ski mask. I did my raids with my own face uncovered. No point in covering my face anyway as my clothes and the portals were dead give-aways. After a few minutes, I blew my horn and everyone snapped to attention.

"One last piece of advice: don't grab for anything in glass. Glass breaks. You can get hurt if a glass jar hits the floor. Be careful if you're grabbing something that is next to glass containers. Now, let's go!"

I blew open a smoke portal and in went the shrunken head of the duchess. Show time.

End of Chapter 9

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10: "Pitch Black"

The raid went as normal with two small hitches. The first small hitch was that one young woman started to grab for Chromebooks and I stopped her. "The electrical adapters are all for 220-240 volts. Leave them! Get something nonelectrical." She filled her gym bag with plastic bottles of cooking oil. The second hitch was another young woman who wanted to swipe dresses and was unaware that British dress sizes were not the same as U.S. sizes. I warned her and she started grabbing two or three of every size available. I thought that was the smart way to go about it. Grab everything and sort it out later.

The prizes of the raid were some folding card tables and portable folding aluminum lawn chairs. It was 3:30 A.M. after we finished the raid. The two guards met me and asked me to take a walk with them to help with a problem that they were reluctant to handle. Dead bodies in a completely abandoned line. They carried their rifles with them. Propped against their shoulders pointed almost straight up. I was sure that they were military veterans.

"That's the third rail," announced the taller guard pointing downward off the platform. "Stay as far as you can from it." He walked down a graduated series of concrete blocks piled up to the left of the platform which served as a sort of ladder for the feral cats. The concrete blocks were about 18 inches wide which was wide enough except for one problem: the blocks were shoved up against the wall of the tunnel. My left hip would be in the way. The taller guard looked back at me and asked why I didn't follow.

"These!" I said, pointing to my hips. He broke out laughing.

"Too shapely for the stairs! Want me to get the ladder, Princess?"

"No, I'll hop down. It's only a few feet."

I sat down on the edge of the concrete which the residents kept swept and mopped and let myself down delicately. We headed left toward the spur line that was completely abandoned. After about two minutes of walking, I spotted to my left a graffiti that had my own face. There was a quote with my portrait.

"Money is a sick, psychotic scorekeeping system invented by a tiny handful of super-rich people to control the whole of humanity. They control the price of everything and the wages everyone earns. It is an economic dictatorship. It is the continuation of slavery without the ankle chain and whip. The new lash becomes the threat of hunger and homelessness. Anyone who challenges the system is imprisoned or cast out into the streets to serve as an example to the rest. Under capitalism, governments, legal systems, jails, prisons, police, security guards, and the military all serve to protect the power of the billionaire class. They work to ensure the continuation of the system of mass servitude. Make no mistake: if you work for money, you are a slave." -Alice of Wonderland

"It's quite a quote," said the shorter guard. "Most people in the world above us would dismiss it out of hand. They would say that you're the crazy one. Those of us down here in the tunnels know otherwise. The people of the world above are sleepwalkers. It's a real-life Matrix up there. The idea that money is an illusion, a pure abstraction, requires too much effort on their part. They don't want to consider the idea that our society is stark raving mad. Look at who our president is! The movie 'Idiocracy' was supposed to be a satire, not prophesy!"

"You won't get any argument from me about that movie. I saw it a long time ago and I've been thinking about it a lot." We trudged past a platform that was in use. It was brightly lit, clean, and had no graffiti up on the platform itself. To the left and right of the platform, however, the frequent graffiti images continued. A few of the graffiti images appeared to be painted with a brush. One such painted image showed a giant rat with a crown and scepter and the quote "We rule the night!"

"Some of these graffiti artists have real talent!" I commented as I stared at King Rat.

"And yet the only thing some of them get for their work is a prison sentence."

The taller guard pointed ahead and noted what appeared to be simply a dark spot in the wall. It was on our right across the tracks. We had to step over the third rail on both sides. Ugh! My dresses only came down to just above the knee, but I held my dress up anyway as I stepped over both times. "That's the entrance into the abandoned line. Since there are absolutely no lights in there, you might make the assumption that the third rail is not electrified. Stay well away from it anyway, just in case." We approached closer and I was unable to see anything beyond the opening area. Pitch black.

"We're going in there?" I asked. I was genuinely unnerved.

"We both have three flashlights," said the taller guard. "The one in the right pocket that we use. The one in the left pocket that is a backup. Both of us have a penlight in the shirt pocket. You don't ever want to get caught down here without a light. You never know when the electricity might go out. There's also a reason besides total darkness that you don't ever want to get caught without a light. You'll find out soon enough."

We entered the abandoned spur line. A few steps in and the darkness enveloped us. I still heard ventilation fans humming, however. Only the feeble light from the flashlights enabled us to see where we were stepping. We kept to the right to avoid the third rail. I heard ominous rustling sounds everywhere around us. Ancient trash was everywhere.

"That sound you hear is the rats retreating from our lights," said the shorter guard. "They're just beyond the lit part of the ground. They're everywhere. They won't go voluntarily into the light. I could suddenly raise my light to let you see them if you'd like."

"I'll pass on that. As long as they retreat from the light, I'm happy."

"The abandoned platforms are all on the right," said the shorter guard. "The first one is a few minutes up ahead."

The rustling sounds just beyond the reach of the flashlights continued. I noticed that there were no feral cats in this tunnel. A trickle of water appeared on the tracks.

"There's a broken water pipe up ahead," said the taller guard. "I have no idea how long it's been spewing. Could be decades."

"What were people doing in this tunnel?"

The two guards looked at each other. The shorter guard decided to answer.

"The transit police cleared the tunnel dwellers out in the 1990s. Not everyone left. A few people retreated deeper into the tunnels into places where the transit police were afraid to go. Such as this tunnel. The people who went into this tunnel never came out. The folklore is that they all died of murine typhus."

"How did they get typhus?"

"Rat fleas. Murine typhus is supposed to be highly treatable, but this happened before the Medicaid expansion. The people in this tunnel tried to sweat it out, and eventually all of them died. The bodies are still here. Don't touch them."

"No warning was needed," I said. "When did people start filtering back into the subway tunnels?"

"A few years ago. The homeless shelters are all full. No housing available. No place to put us except the streets if the transit police evict us. The Democratic mayor has ordered an end to homeless evictions for the time being. Not sure if that applies to abandoned private property."

We trudged ahead kicking aside the trash in front of us as we walked. The rustling sounds of the rats became louder. The taller guard turned his head.

"The first platform is just up ahead. We'll have to pull ourselves up onto the platform. How's your stomach doing?"

"Queasy, but still okay. Let's go."

We reached the platform, and the two guards pulled themselves up. The place was strewn with trash everywhere. No needles from druggies shooting up, though. Praises be. The two guards kicked away all the trash and I pulled myself up onto the filthy platform. I raised my hands in front of my face and stared at the dirt.

"Awww! Princess get dirty?" teased the taller guard.

"I'll take a shower when I get back to Wonderland and have my clothes washed."

I was struck by how little graffiti was on the platform. I kicked trash out of the way as I walked. The two guards led me directly to the bodies. Seven skeletons with every last ounce of flesh gone. Nothing but pure dirty white bone. The taller guard turned toward me.

"It is now 4:15 A.M. The trains start running in one hour and fifteen minutes. We can't go any further into the tunnel if we want to get back to the Worth Street platform. There's not enough room to flatten against the tunnel walls if a train is passing. What do you want to do with the bodies, Princess?"

"Do you have any paper and markers with you?"

"Nope, but there's some paper and markers back on the Worth Street platform."

"I'll be back." I disappeared through a mind portal. Five minutes later I returned with seven sheets of heavy white paper with "Died from Murine Typhus in Tunnels before Medicaid Expansion -Alice" marked on each in medium black marker ink. I placed one sheet on each of the seven skeletons and then dropped each through a mind portal.

"What did you do with the bodies?" asked the taller guard when I was finished.

"I gave them to the governor in his mansion."

End of Chapter 10

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11: "Escalation"

Upon getting back home to Wonderland, I only wanted to go to bed to sleep, but first I needed to clean myself up. I took a shower in the outdoor wooden shower stall, put on fresh lingerie and a clean dress, and then took my dirt-smudged dress over to the Gnome laundry. No one was up at that hour, so I simply left my dirty dress and things. I figured I would hear from the Gnome ladies later.

My seven-days-a-week morning chore was to slay two killer mushrooms and chop them up in family-sized chunks for the Gnome open-air market where everyone came to both offer what they had and pick up what they needed. No money ever changed hands as there was no such thing as money in Wonderland. Not even barter. We all did our thing, contributed to the community, and took what we needed. It usually took me about half an hour to select my two victims and kill them, and then it took me another half hour to chop up the two killer mushrooms. Yeah, time-consuming to chop up those two giants.

When I finished my morning chore, I crawled into bed to sleep until I needed to get up at noon again to go to my afternoon job at Bill McGill's distillery. All of Wonderland's brandy was made there. That job was only five days a week. One to five o'clock for me.

"Did you crawl through a garbage dump on hands and knees?" exploded a Gnome lady as I walked to the distillery after snoozing the morning away. I really needed my usual morning nap. More than usual. I looked at the Gnome lady with my best weary expression.

"I took a bunch of subway tunnel dwellers on a grocery store raid and helped them dispose of seven dead bodies that were on a nearby abandoned platform. There was no light, thousands of rats, trash half-a-foot deep, and the only way up on the platform was to pull myself up, plop forwards into all that dirt, get on hands and knees, and then stand up. The seven corpses were the cleanest things in the tunnel. Picked absolutely clean."

"What's a rat?" asked the Gnome lady.

I was caught completely off-guard and unable to respond before she walked away. I mentioned seven dead bodies stripped to the bone and she was wondering what a rat was. Yeah, I was tired.

Four hours of making walnut brandy and I was free for the evening. Free to decide what to do next. I felt that I needed to retaliate for the spreading of dragonfly drones into grocery stores and wondered what was the safest way to retaliate. It suddenly popped into my head that opening a portal from Wonderland to a target area was a very bad idea because of the possibility that a dragonfly drone would fly in through the portal. What a thought! A dragonfly drone loose in Wonderland. I was starting to feel really paranoid and stressed out.

I checked with Hatter to see if the new metal-fabric body suit was ready. It was completed, but Hatter was still testing it and didn't want me using it until he was sure that it was needle-proof. So no metal fabric available yet. I decided to take a trip abroad to a coffee shop so I could use the internet. I had an idea. I spent some time trying to think of a place that seemed risk-free and was unlikely to be crawling with CIA agents posted abroad. Some place out-of-the-way.

I went into my weapons locker where Hatter dumped off both U.S. dollars and foreign exchange for my use. I looked to see what was available. Dollars, euros, British pounds, Mexican pesos, and Cuban convertible pesos. That was it. I picked up 150 British pounds and put them in the leather wallet I kept in my right dress pocket. Edinburgh, Scotland it was! I picked up my old Thinkpad and stuffed it into a laptop bag that I draped diagonally across my chest to make snatching it harder.

I stepped through a mind portal into an area backdropped by the big castle. A wino saw me step through the mind portal and ran terrified down the cobblestone side street. I noticed that he threw his bottle into an uncovered trash can as he ran. I simply wandered around until I found a small coffee shop that was not part of any chain. Free wifi with purchase. Good enough. I stepped into the old brick building and ordered a big glass of orange spice iced tea with no sugar at the highly polished dark wood counter. I made sure I specified no sugar. I didn't want that syrupy glop that you get in southern states in the U.S. The inside of the coffee shop looked spotlessly clean. They had Cadbury's chocolate bars at the front counter and I couldn't resist. Just one bar.

I found myself a table with my back to the wall and looked around to see if there were any tattle-tale mirrors around that would allow the few other people in the coffee ship to see what I was doing. No mirrors! Hallelujah! There were coffee shops in the U.S. that had highly reflective picture frames located behind booths that might as well have been mirrors. I also suspected that at least a few large coffee shops in the U.S. had a tech employee in the back who was watching all of the internet activity on the coffee shop wireless network.

I logged on to the wireless network and began searching for live web cams in Chicago. I was looking for a live web cam that had a good view of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank. It was remarkably easy to find one. The only problem was that the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank was closely surrounded by other large buildings. I started opening portals deep underneath the bank building while watching for cracks in the facade. It took over a hundred portals to cause the facade to start to crack. People started streaming out the doors looking around to see if it was an earthquake. No earthquake, so they looked confused. I opened my chocolate bar and chewed on it while I waited for the stream of people coming out the front door to end.

When I had finished my chocolate and big glass of orange spice iced tea, there had been no people exiting the front doors for several minutes. I decided to continue opening portals sending cracks spreading throughout the outer walls of the building. People in the streets ran thinking the building was going to collapse. I stopped opening portals under the building because I thought it was too dangerous to collapse the building. The Chicago Federal Reserve Building was completely destroyed and too dangerous to enter to rescue anything. I didn't have to collapse the building to achieve my task.

I ordered a second big glass of orange spice iced tea and wondered if President Trump would get the hint to call off his dragonfly assassin drones. I decided to have dinner in the coffee shop and got a fancy egg salad sandwich to go with my tea. I stared out the window of the coffee shop at the scene of people passing by on the rustic cobblestone street and decided simply to enjoy the moment.

End of Chapter 11

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12: "Big Brother at Work"

My need to go uptop to find the latest news made me feel more and more hunted. I traveled uptop only under heavy disguise. I had even dyed my hair blond and had it cut a little shorter. Instead of flowing down past my shoulders, my hair just barely reached my shoulders. I started wearing make-up for trips uptop. I borrowed the make-up from Arianne. She didn't seem to mind at all and even applied the make-up for me.

The coffee shop that I had visited in Edinburgh in Scotland was raided by MI5 agents less than 24 hours after I was there. They snatched all the computers and bullied the owners. Sheesh! Like the owners had anything to do with destroying a building in the U.S. It was on page 2 of the New York Times the next day. I decided not to use anymore coffee shops for a building destruction via web cam.

Still no mention in the U.S. news media of dragonfly drones in homeless encampments. There were little blurbs in local news sections about large, strange-looking insects seen flying around in grocery stores, however. I also saw a few warnings to parents to teach their children not to pick up anything that looked like a dragonfly.

I needed to find another messenger to President Trump, and I felt using former President Obama would be a bad idea because he was almost certain to have been "chipped" with a GPS tracker in anticipation of me snatching him a second time. Each messenger was strictly one use only. Who? While watching TV in a tiny Paris coffee shop, the answer stared me in the face as a Senator who had been with me on the trip through Hell in 2007 was live on screen. I dropped one of my mind portals underneath her and dropped her in a nearby park in a grove of trees not visible to the public. I dashed into the coffee shop restroom and transported myself to the same spot.

"Hello, again," I said. She rolled her eyes in disbelief, but said nothing. I walked her to the edge of the park and pointed to the coffee shop just down the street. "Meet me inside Cafe Indiscret. I'll be sitting in one of the six booths on the left side. There are only ten booths in the entire place." Since I was her only quick means of getting back home, I didn't have to worry about her not showing up. I transported myself back to the bathroom, finished my business, and walked back out to my booth to wait for her. Suddenly I wondered if she would be able to read the sign in French. It was only a few minutes until she entered the coffee shop and sat down in front of me.

"You again," groaned Senator Lisa Murkowski. "What are you going to do me this time?"

"Nothing like the last time. No accidental bath in rage potion to turn me into a monster this time. I need you to take a message to President Trump. Strictly a one-time task. It's not safe for me to use anyone twice."

"Since when have you ever been concerned about safety?"

"Since President Trump turned loose in the homeless encampments and now grocery stores tiny little drones that look like dragonflies and carry an autoinjector needle filled with cyanide. The cyanide is for me."

Senator Lisa Murkowski stared at me with her jaw hanging open. "For robbing grocery stores?"

"Apparently I'm a pain that he just can't tolerate." Senator Murkowski looked genuinely worried.

"President Trump has precisely the same opinion of me because I voted against proceeding to consider the insane Republican bill to take away health insurance from tens of millions of people which would surely kill tens of thousands of people."

"That's why I picked you. One of the very few voices of sanity inside a political party that has gone completely bonkers."

"What's your message? Won't be any trouble for me to deliver it as President Trump is sure to call all of us Republican Senators in for another round of arm-twisting."

"I've already sent President Trump two messages in the form of destroyed government buildings and he has ignored both."

"You destroyed the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago. I know about that. I saw it in the newspapers. Had to be you. I don't know what the other building was."

"The Utah Data Center of the National Security Agency."

Ms. Murkowski shook her head. "Don't know anything about it. Not in newspapers. Didn't come up in Senate meetings. I'm not in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence."

"My message is this: pull back the dragonfly drones and announce it publicly or my third attack will involve multiple targets."

"That's it?"

"That's it. Gotta keep it short. I doubt that he can process more than three tiny bits of information at a time."

Ms. Murkowski snorted. "Excuse me. You're actually more generous that I am. The man's a psychopath who's unfit to be president. What he'll do about North Korea keeps me awake at night."

I sighed. "Can't help you with the North Korea problem. Will you deliver my message?"

"Of course. Since we're in Paris, and I haven't any euros, buy me a latte? I'd like to enjoy my brief moment in Paris. This is Paris, isn't it?"

"Of course." I called the waiter over in French and asked for a latte for Ms. Murkowski. I got an iced orange spice tea for myself . No sugar. When the drinks came, we moved to the empty table in front of the window and watched Paris go by. Ms. Murkowski had one question she was burning to ask me.

"When you show up at a homeless encampment, do you always get red-carpet treatment?"

"Homeless encampments are incredibly dangerous places. Some of them are completely, utterly lawless. I'm always hypervigilant when I'm in a homeless encampment. I try to avoid letting people get behind me. The best homeless encampments are organized as a sort of community with elected officials. Also fairly good are smaller encampments that have a sort of unofficial mayor who was the first there and who generally shows newcomers where to get necessities and how to survive."

"What about the worst places?"

"The worst places are all-white homeless encampments in places like eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Missouri, Arkansas, and Georgia."

"In other words, Appalachia and the Ozarks mostly."

"Rural Missouri is really bad. I've had people greet me with chants of 'Go back to Russia, communist bitch!' and I've had rocks thrown at me in at least a dozen places. I've been hit in the head with a rock in three places: eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and rural Missouri. If someone throws a rock at me, I just leave. I've stopped caring about places that give me a hostile reception. I haven't been to eastern Kentucky or West Virginia in years. To put it bluntly, I'm tired. The grocery store raids have been totally ineffective as a means of political protest. Now it's just food. One raid can give a small encampment a chance to stock in a two-month supply of food. It goes faster than you'd think."

"Have you ever thought about just walking away from it all and staying in Wonderland permanently?"

"Every time someone throws a rock at me. Have you ever thought about leaving the Republican Party?"

"Every time I have to sit next to President Trump."

Ms. Murkowski turned her attention to the scene outside the window. Parisians out for a stroll in the evening stopping in at small shops of a type that have all but vanished in the U.S. Across the street was a small bookshop brimming with local flavor which had a steady stream of customers both entering and exiting. A restaurant with sidewalk tables was just down the street. People sat at their tables after meals drinking wine and watching the world go by. Groups of college boys sat at tables together watching young women walk by. I was struck by all the activity in the streets in the evenings.

It was not a bad way to spend the evening. I ordered and paid for two more drinks for us both before I took Ms. Murkowski back to the park to the grove of trees to send her back. She was not bad company.

End of Chapter 12

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	13. Chapter 13

"Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers." - Aristotle

Chapter 13: "Rain"

The first order of business the next day, after finishing my morning chore, was to check if Hatter had finished testing the metal-fabric suit. He had, and it was ready for me to use. I took my clothes and lingerie off in his testing lab and tried it on. Everything was perfect. The metal-fabric suit included a hood which covered my head except for my face. I folded it up and took it with me back to my bedroom.

The next task was to visit Wonderland's glassworks which was, of course, located right next to Bill's distillery. I asked for a gross - that's 144 - of thin-walled glass bottles that would break easily. It was an unusual request, and the gnomes at the glassworks asked what they were for. "Target practice," I said. It was partly true. I needed something easily breakable for practice at knife-throwing. I didn't want to get rusty in case I ever needed to resort to throwing my bowie knife. My real intent for the thin-walled bottles needed to remain completely secret for the moment.

That night around one o'clock I was woken by the sound of rain pattering on the roof of my house in Pandemonium. Rain in Wonderland means that rain is pouring down in sheets just above Wonderland. It was an opportunity to do a raid without having to worry about those dragonfly drones. I didn't think it would be possible for those things to fly with rain coming down in sheets. I decided to make a quick visit to Arianne's old homeless encampment which was almost directly above Wonderland.

The first thing I noticed was that Hatter's old slow-sand filter for making the creek water drinkable was still in operation. This was surely the only homeless encampment in the United States that had it's own water treatment plant. People still took the effluent and added two drops of plain chlorine bleach to each one-quart or one-liter bottle. There were several men in the encampment who knew how to maintain the sand in the filter. I was impressed.

I was quickly soaked. I looked up to the sky to see the rain coming down in solid sheets. Water splashed my face and ran in my eyes. No, there was no chance that any dragonfly drones were flying around in this. I gathered together the night's raiders, had them grab their gloves and ski masks, and off we went to raid a Cheapmart in Canada.

Considerably less risk of dragonfly drones in a grocery store in Canada, but not impossible, I suppose. No problems with electronics in Canada, either. I noticed that some of the raiders grabbed a Chromebook or two. I, myself, grabbed all the ABC fire extinguishers on the shelves. Maybe 18 total. I knew that I would be needing them in the near future.

Almost immediately after returning from the raid, I noticed a commotion about 25 feet away from me and went to investigate. Everybody was gathered together around what looked like a large insect floundering along the ground. I recognized it immediately.

"You! Go get a glass jar with a lid! Now! Move it!"

I looked around for something to pin it in place with. I didn't want to use the blade of my Bowie knife to pin it knowing that it had a cyanide needle in it waiting to pop out. No large rocks nearby. The one time I needed a large rock and there were none nearby. The teenager I sent after a glass jar returned and I took it from him and placed it over the top of the floundering drone. I slipped the edge of the lid under the glass jar and used the edge of my Bowie knife to slide the lid under the jar. Holding the lid in place with my Bowie knife, I turned the jar upright and turned the lid with my finger on the edge of the lid where I had glass between me and the drone.

"Holy fuck!" exclaimed several observers when the drone stabbed a needle right through the metal lid. I wondered if these people knew about the dragonfly drones yet. People in the larger homeless encampments all knew about the dragonfly drones. There was a sort of network between the larger homeless encampments that passed on information. This group? Maybe they didn't know yet.

"Back everyone! There's cyanide in that needle! You! I need a larger glass jar with a metal lid. And a third glass jar that's even larger if you can find one."

It took about two minutes to get the two larger glass jars. I took the jar holding the drone and slipped it metal lid first inside the middle-sized jar and tightened the metal lid. Then I slipped that jar into the largest jar and tightened that lid. This captured drone was not going into Hatter's lab in Wonderland. I deeply appreciated Hatter's wisdom in encasing that first drone in lucite to render it harmless. This drone was going to the Cuban DI.

With all the excitement surrounding the capture of the assassin drone, no one noticed a young woman burst out of a tent holding a radio in her hand. She quickly realized that the rain would ruin the radio and tossed it back inside the tent. It was around one-forty. "McCain voted no! McCain voted no!" She had tears rolling down her face. At first I didn't know what what was going on. Then I realized. Senator McCain had provided the third Republican "No" vote in the U.S. Senate against tearing Obama's grossly inadequate, but still meaningful, Affordable Care Act to pieces. It meant that Medicaid for all these people and others in the 31 states and District of Columbia that had expanded Medicaid was saved from the possibility of being eliminated in a House of Representatives committee draft bill in the near future. I looked around at the tears of joy being shed throughout the camp and watched as those tears mingled with drenching rain that poured from the heavens.

End of Chapter 13

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14: "Havana"

I was not about to take the captured dragonfly drone back to Wonderland out of fear of it escaping, so I took it to a forgotten abandoned subway platform in New York City that was so difficult to get to that it lacked humans, trash, grafitti, and even rats. It had plenty of dust, though. Creepy as an abandoned insane asylum. There was no light at all there, so I used the penlight that I kept in my right dress pocket with my weapons. There was a small office on the platform with a desk. The bottom drawer in the desk was just big enough to hold the triple jars for the dragonfly drone. I would come back for the dragonfly drone the next day. Back home to Wonderland for some sleep.

When evening came, I walked across Wonderland Woods to Hatter's Castle to ask him to accompany me to Havana. Hatter had a direct connection to Cuba's DI. When he made a deal with the Cubans to provide emergency medical care for anyone in Wonderland who needed more than he could offer, he offered the Cubans his expertise in computer programming in return. Hatter ended up becoming a project advisor in the Cubans' development of a national version of Linux for their government computers. It was only a few hours a week. No burden for Hatter at all. The project headquarters was inside the Institute of Cryptography inside the headquarters of the DI. Hatter had a passcard. It amazed me, but he could simply walk in the front door of the Cuban state intelligence agency.

I took Hatter through a portal to the abandoned subway platform where I had stashed the captured dragonfly drone, and he shuddered at the sight of the dark, dusty platform with decaying equipment strewn all about. I extracted the the triply jarred dragonfly drone from the desk drawer and off we went to Havana. No stop for accomodations or anything. Just straight through the front door of the DI.

Hatter had me wait at the front door with our cargo as he walked through. I had no clearance and he needed to talk to some people first. The minutes started to drag and I looked for a place to sit down. None available. I leaned against the wall while I waited. After about fifteen minutes, Hatter appeared at the door with a big grin on his face dangling an ID card for entry on a neck chain just like he had.

"You're in!" he exulted. "You'll never have to wait at the front door again!"

Hatter led the way while I lugged the three glass jars encased inside each other. I worried all the way that I might drop them and break all three jars. When Hatter took me inside a door and motioned to a table, I was more than ready to drop off my cargo. Cuba's leading expert on drone technology was waiting for us. He addressed us in flawless international English.

"It looks like a miniature camera drone. We already have those in Cuba. Your Hatter, however, claims that this drone also carries a weapon in the form of an auto-injector needle containing cyanide. We have nothing like that. I'll take this thing into a sealed room to examine it. Is there anything specific you'd like to know about it?"

"How long will its battery last without light to recharge it?" asked Hatter.

"Good question. Given the small size of this thing, I doubt it can last more than a half hour of flight at the most without any light of sufficient brightness to replenish its charge. I'll test it in a sealed dark room inside a large thick-walled glass case. Anything else you need to know?"

"Any way to disable it or interfere with its function?"

"If I find a way, I'll certainly tell you. Can you both come back in five days?"

"Certainly. Five days it is."

I wasn't too thrilled about having to wait five days for any answers, but I was tickled that someone with access to more equipment than Hatter had was going to study the blasted thing that was making my life uptop an absolute misery. As we exited, I fingered the new ID card hanging around my neck.

End of Chapter 14

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15: "I Read the News Today"

Hatter suggested we have dinner at his favorite outdoor cafe in the area. I was wearing a white dress, makeup, and still had my hair dyed blond, but Hatter had no disguise at all and was one of the most easily identified men on Earth. I was a bit concerned about his lack of a disguise, but Hatter insisted there was nothing to worry about.

"We're not in a tourist area. There are plenty of cafes here that take convertible pesos, but that's because of all the embassies in the area. This is embassy row. To the Cubans, embassies equal foreigners with hard currency. They are eager to accomodate."

Hatter led me to a metal chair at a series of tables underneath an awning. I couldn't help but think of Paris. There was a steady breeze coming off the ocean which explained the lack of insects buzzing around the tables. I could see the ocean way down the street. I counted eight tables under the awning in all. Each table had two one-page laminated menus in a clip in the center. Nothing else on the tables at all. On the side of each table was a tag with a number. Each table had three chairs and in front of each chair was a tag with the letter "A," "B," or "C." This was something I had never seen in the United States.

Hatter saw me looking at the numbers and letters. "Very well organized, don't you think? Here comes our server. Don't worry. She'll speak English."

"I can speak Spanish, Hatter. Don't you remember? You and Caterpillar taught me."

The server came to me first.

"And what would the lady like?" I noticed the waitress wink at Hatter.

"Fish tacos and iced hibiscus tea."

"And you, Hatter?"

"Fish tacos and iced oolong tea."

"Your usual."

I heard the waitress whisper "gordita guapa" in Hatter's ear. I sank down into my seat a little. Hatter explained after the waitress left.

"Don't slink down into your chair! That was a compliment. Really. It was. Sit up and throw your chest out. I know you like to do that anyway!"

The waitress came with our food and wanted to take a photo. I cringed, but Hatter assured me all was well. I leaned back in the chair, moved a hip outwards, crossed my legs showing a thigh, and threw my chest out. My "show-off" pose. The waitress took the photo and said she would post it on the walls inside the restaurant with photos of other couples who had visited. I hoped I would go unrecognized. The people I encountered in the Cuban DI building definitely knew who I was. I felt it was only a matter of time before someone noticed the photo in the restaurant and identified me. I decided to change my hair color again and have it cut shorter when I got back to Wonderland.

While we ate, a group of three men finished their meal and left behind a newspaper on their table. Hatter walked over and snatched it with no shame.

"They left it on purpose for someone else to look at. I'll leave it behind on this table when we leave."

I looked at the paper. It was an international English edition of a Canadian newspaper. I cringed at the headlines.

"Now I wish I hadn't looked," said Hatter.

The lead article was about the escalating war of words between President Trump and the North Korean dictator who had threatened to strike Guam. The stock markets had plunged in response. When the stock markets plunge, things are getting serious. The investigation into possible collusion between Trump's campaign committee and the Russians had just resulted in an FBI raid on the home of Trump's former campaign chairman.

At the bottom of the front page was an article revealing that the CIA was operating inside the borders of the United States in violation of its charter. It mentioned two unnamed sources claiming that the CIA was using dragonfly drones armed with cyanide to attempt an assassination of Alice of Wonderland. Bless you Lisa. The secret was finally out.

Congress was in recess, but the congress critters were furious about Trump shooting off his mouth and making the North Korea situation worse. The congress critters also did a lot of hand-wringing over the possibility of a child finding and picking up a dragonfly drone that had exhausted its battery. The word "impeachment" was uttered aloud. Finally. I decided it was time to strike back hard and push President Trump further off-balance. I looked at Hatter.

"I think it's time for my cocktail party."

End of Chapter 15

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16: "Hair"

As soon as Hatter and I got back to Wonderland, I headed straight to the hair salon in Gnome Village. Bye-bye blond hair! The Gnome ladies in the hair salon were just a wee bit ticked when I asked for auburn hair.

"You want to change your hair color again? You just had it changed!"

"I've been disguising myself when I go uptop. President Trump has been trying to assassinate me. Remember?"

"That's a good reason to change your hair color again. Shouldn't be too difficult to go from blond to auburn. However, don't change your mind again later. Going from auburn to blond would require either growing your hair out to prepare, or using color remover."

"I also want my hair cut even shorter, a pageboy with hair just down to the chin."

"Nobody will recognize you will hair that short. Not even us here in Wonderland."

The gnome hair stylist proceded to cut my hair, and a seamstress walked in carrying three dresses.

"You want to carry these three dresses back to Arianne when we get finished cutting and coloring your hair?"

"Three dresses? Why so many?"

"Look at the size of the dresses. Isn't it obvious? We've been making new dresses for Arianne around every month since Trump got elected. We also make new bras and panties for her about every month. All she does is eat. All day long. Ever since that maniac got elected. She's so big now that empire-waist dresses are all that she can wear. Clearest case of Post-Trump Stress Disorder I've ever seen. She's gained twenty inches around where her waist used to be."

I looked at the dresses. They were almost tent dresses. I knew that Arianne had gotten quite a bit bigger, but this much? It had been a couple of months since we had had one of our love making sessions. I thought we were overdue and decided to make overtures that night. No grocery store raids that night, I thought. I was in the mood for love.

When my hair appointment was over, I carried Arianne's dresses to her bedroom, laid them across her bed, and went to collect my gross of bottles from the glassworks.

The bottles were in wooden crates with twelve to a crate. I was surprised to see a cork in every bottle. There was a note on top of the crates.

"We figured you might appreciate some stoppers for your target practice."

The gnomes had seen right through me and knew exactly what I was planning to do with the bottles. That saved me a step. No scrounging for bottle stoppers. I already knew what to do for the wicks. I decided to cut up one of my old size two dresses from ages ago to provide the wicks. After all, what was the chance that I would ever fit into a size two dress again? All that was left was to scrounge for alcohol in the distillery, and then swipe some motor oil. I moved the crates one-by-one into my weapons locker via mind portals.

Since it was getting late, I decided to return home. I noticed a light on in Arianne's bedroom and knocked on the door.

"Enter!"

I opened the door and saw Arianne wearing one of the new dresses that I had laid on her bed. It did an excellent job of showing off the avalanche of her cleavage.

"Eyes buried in the cleavage as usual, Alice?"

"I'm going to take a night off from raiding grocery stores. Would you be in the mood for a little night-time entertainment while everyone else is asleep?"

"You're in the mood? It's been awhile. I was beginning to think you had lost interest."

"Now why would I do that?"

Arianne pulled her dress down tight to give me a clear view of the newfound expansiveness of her girth. She looked like she was ten months pregnant. "Damn! We're gonna need a bigger bed!" I thought. I tried not to wince at Arianne's size.

"Everybody reacts to stress differently," I said. "Waking up each morning wondering if the U.S. is at war with North Korea would stress out anyone. You eat nonstop and balloon. I guzzle unsweetened iced hibiscus tea by the gallon in the gnome bar and have to run to the bathroom eighteen times a day. Hatter serves valerian tea and Wonderland Weed at his parties now. Everyone falls asleep."

"I'd rather run to the bathroom eighteen times a day than be this big."

"So would I. I'm grateful that I'm not a stress-eater."

"Tonight, then, if you're in the mood," said Arianne.

"Okay, tonight. See you then." I opened the door to exit. Arianne called to me just before I pulled the door shut.

"Alice!"

"Yes?"

"Nice hair."

End of Chapter 16

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.

Edit #4 for Fig-Leaf Edition Only


	17. Chapter 17

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." - Napoleon Bonaparte

Chapter 17: "Recipe for a Molotov Cocktail"

The time had come. It was evening in Wonderland and I needed a few bottles of motor oil. I looked in my weapons locker at the foreign currencies available and found no Canadian dollars. There were some Mexican pesos. Good enough. Mexico City it was. Good thing I could speak Spanish. It didn't take me long to find an "auto partes" store there. Four one-liter containers of motor oil. No eyebrows raised. I handed over the pesos, collected my change, and off I went. Just another customer. I left the motor oil in my weapons locker.

Next I needed alcohol. I went over into the distillery to look around. Everyone had gone home, so I had the place to myself. Nothing locked. Zero security. So unlike the world above. I thought of the Second Law of Wonderland: "Take What You Need." I looked around and found a barrel of Gnome moonshine that seemed unwanted. Powerful stuff: 140 proof. Perfect for a Molotov Cocktail.

I dropped a table and a barrel mount through a portal onto the cement floor of my weapons locker and then went there to set up the table and mount. Back to distillery. I dropped the Gnome moonshine barrel through a portal onto the floor of my weapons locker. Back to the weapons locker. I set up the barrel mount on top of the table. I stared at the barrel of moonshine. I was going to have to lift the barrel into place myself. I would have been stymied if I hadn't the strength of the "Queen of Hearts" even in normal form. I gritted my teeth and hoisted the barrel up into place on the mount. I needed a spigot.

Back to the distillery supplies room. Found a clean spigot and mallet. Back to the weapons locker. Since no one was going to drink the moonshine, I did not bother to clean the bung. I held the spigot against the bung in the barrel and gave it two soft raps and then one hard rap. Moonshine spurted out onto the floor and headed for the drain as I whacked the spigot into place. All set up.

I pulled the wooden crates of breakable glass bottles out near the table and pulled the stoppers out. I uncapped the bottles of motor oil and proceded to pour about a tablespoon of motor oil into each of the bottles. I emptied two of the bottles of motor oil and part of a third bottle. Then I filled each bottle with moonshine and put the cork stopper back in. That took awhile. Next I needed the wicks.

I pulled an old size two dress out of a storage trunk in the house in Pandemonium. I held up the dress and marveled that I was ever that tiny. Then I remembered how unpleasant it was to be skinny, curveless, and constantly mistaken for a teenaged boy. I ran my hands up and down my rounded hips and bottom and could not help myself.

"Thank God for chocolate!"

With no nostalgia whatsoever, I proceeded to cut the dress up into strips to provide wicks for the Molotov Cocktails. I dumped my treasure in two shoe boxes and dropped myself through a portal back into my weapons locker. I unstopped each bottle, inserted the wick, and restoppered it. One by one with 144 bottles. I was tired when it was done. The only thing left to do was soak the wicks in alcohol. That would wait until I was at my attack location. I was not about to carry out an attack from Wonderland just in case a dragonfly drone flew in through a portal. Yes, I was that antsy.

One final task was to gather pictures of my target locations. Magazines love to feature photo essays of the homes and businesses of the wealthy. So convenient for me. I would have to go to a public library for that. I decided that a university library full of students would be my best bet for an extensive selection of periodicals. Instead of using computers to do my searches, which would surely show up in an NSA database somewhere, I decided to do my searches the old fashioned way using the end-of-year indexes that periodicals do in the bound annuals that they sell to libraries. "Fuck you, NSA!" I thought.

I was too tired that night to do any more preparation. Or any raids. The library searches, I thought, would have to wait until another day.

End of Chapter 17

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.

The "recipe" for a Molotov Cocktail is easily available on the internet, including at Wikipedia. Remember that the NSA is watching. Please don't anyone get the idea of making a Molotov Cocktail at home. Remember that almost every home has at least one appliance that uses a pilot light. Your water heater probably has a pilot light. If you make a Molotov Cocktail, drop it near a pilot light or other ignition source, and the glass breaks, you will turn into a human torch. To further discourage you, I urge you to create a new tab in your web browser, Google "burn victim," and hit the images tab. If that doesn't discourage you from making a Molotov Cocktail, I don't know what else will. Don't be an idiot. -Nikki Little


	18. Chapter 18

"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum." -Nada in John Carpenter's "They Live"

Chapter 18: "Humpty-Trumpty"

My morning chore done, I decided that the best place to look for the kinds of magazines that I needed to get pictures of my targets was a U.S. university library. A Canadian university library would have been safer, but I doubted that it would have complete sets of the magazine titles that I needed. I needed the photographs because I couldn't create portals to places that I had never seen.

I pulled Hatter's metal-fabric suit out of my dresser and laid it on my bed. I took off my lingerie and squirmed into the suit. I wondered how long it had been since I had been measured for the metal fabric suit and soon got my answer. Oof! The suit was a bit tight through the hips. I walked around in the metal-fabric suit and decided that it was tolerable and finished getting dressed. I left the hood down where it was hidden under my dress. I applied mascara and a tiny bit of powdered minerals to my face to make me harder to recognize. Off to the main library of Ohio State University in Columbus with my laptop bag to blend in. I took one hundred dollars in cash and dozens of bookmarks with me. I did not take a laptop computer with me. I didn't want to risk having it stolen. I locked my bedroom door before leaving. The lock was new to prevent anyone from walking in on me during sex. Arianne had one, too.

I pulled my usual trick of placing my entrance portal in an obscure area and walked to the library. The place was packed with students and it took me some searching to find a study carrel that was empty. I draped my empty laptop bag over the back of the chair to claim the space. That was a common way to mark a carrel that was in use.

I disappeared into the stacks to search the Southern Living magazines first and found around a third of what I needed. Unique Homes, Upscale Living, Forbes Life, and Robb Report contained the rest. I tossed the annuals onto my carrel one-by-one with a bookmark at the appropriate article. The last target took me about half an hour of searching through indexes in the stacks to find.

When I came back, my laptop bag was missing. Fuck! At least the jerk didn't get anything with the laptop bag. It was empty except for my bookmarks, and some paper, pens, and pencils. I had to hold my 16 magazine annuals when I walked through a mind portal back into my locked bedroom. I had not seen or heard anything that resembled a dragonfly while in the library. I decided to carry out my "cocktail party" that night. I was more than a little relieved to get out of that tight metal-fabric suit.

At one o'clock in the morning, I awoke, put on my metal-fabric suit, and got dressed. My attack site was an abandoned hotel located in the post-industrial wastelands of Detroit. An easy place to abandon in case a dragonfly drone flew in through a portal. I chose a room on the top floor twelve stories up where the squatters and drug dealers almost never appeared. I had been there before.

I looked out the shattered window with no curtains at the decaying abandoned factories to my left and partially collapsed empty homes to my right. Moonlight flooded into the room via the window to frost everything in an eerie silvery glaze. The room itself was full of dust with a made bed that obviously hadn't been touched since the hotel had closed. The furniture was shrouded in dust and the carpet spewed up clouds with my every step. I coughed and remembered that I hadn't caught any illnesses from all the debris in the air the last time I had been in this room. I hoped my luck would hold this time. The shattered window allowed some fresh air to blow into the room. I locked the decrepit deadbolt lock in the door and shoved the bed up against the door both to provide additional security and to create an empty space in the middle of the room.

The room had sprinklers visible in the ceiling, but there was no water in the bathroom. I suspected that the sprinklers had been nonfunctional for at least a decade. I flashed myself via mind portal back to my weapons locker to pick up three fire extinguishers. Just in case. The hotel might have been abandoned, but I sure didn't want to set it on fire.

I flashed the fire extinguishers back to the hotel room and then walked to my bedroom to pick up a pewter candlestick, a fresh candle, and the sixteen magazine annuals with target photographs. I flashed the candlestick and the candle back to the hotel room. Then I dragged out the magazine annuals, arranged them in attack order, and flashed them back to the hotel room. Then I needed matches. I found a packet of old-fashioned wooden kitchen matches in the kitchen of my house in a metal cabinet drawer. Back to my weapons locker to pick up the cases of Molotov Cocktails. One by one I flashed them to the hotel room floor.

I needed alcohol to soak the wicks of the Molotov Cocktails. I got a glass from my kitchen and filled it with moonshine from the barrel in my weapons locker. I walked through the mind portal back into the hotel room and took stock of what I had. Cocktails - check. Alcohol for wicks - check. Candle - check. Matches - check. Fire extinguishers - check. Photographs of targets - check. Everything was in the hotel room.

Last task to prepare. I proceeded to soak the wicks of every Molotov Cocktail in the moonshine in the glass. I needed to go back to my weapons locker several times to refill the glass with moonshine. I unpacked the first case of twelve Molotov Cocktails and set them up on the carpet for lighting the wicks. Finally. All ready.

I found the annual with photographs of my first target: President Trump's Mar-a-Lago Resort. I laid it open next to the Molotov cocktails. I reached into my right dress pocket, pulled out my shrunken head of the Duchess weapon, and pitched it into the various rooms of the resort hoping to send everyone inside fleeing before I tossed in any Molotov Cocktails. The shrunken head of the Duchess, after a few bounces on a floor, emitted a foul-smelling black cloud of non-toxic, but hallucinogenic gas that had people seeing monsters after one whiff. People always ran. Every single time.

After my last toss of the shrunken head, I returned to the first photograph, lit the wick of the first Molotov cocktail, opened a portal beneath it, and dropped it through a portal near the ceiling into the target room. I briefly opened a portal just to see that the Cocktail had ignited. It had. I proceeded to ignite the wicks of the remaining Molotov Cocktails from the case of twelve and drop them from ceiling height into the target rooms. I was very glad that I had had the Gnomes make the glass bottles thin-walled and fragile. This ensured very few Cocktails hitting the floor without exploding.

After this, I proceeded to do the same for each of my succeeding targets. Twelve lit Molotov Cocktails through mind portals dropped from ceiling height into target rooms after clearing them first with the shrunken head of the duchess. All of my targets were properties owned by President Donald Trump. I hit none of his apartment buildings, however. Too difficult to clear everyone out of apartment buildings, I and didn't want to hurt uninvolved people.

It dawned on me that I was surely the world's sorriest excuse for a terrorist: always worrying about accidentally killing someone. My goal was the destruction of property and only the destruction of property in hopes of achieving political goals.

I was successful. Sitting in a twenty-four-hour coffeeshop in London, I saw on a TV tuned to CNN that the entire Trump family had boarded a private jet and were winging their way to political asylum in Saudi Arabia while the twelve properties that I had targeted, and numerous other U.S. properties owned by rich people, were burning to the ground. Homeless mobs were shown hurling their own Molotov Cocktails at the properties of the rich. Without the safety factor of me clearing the targets of people first. I winced. News commentators wrung their hands that revolution had come to America.

End of Chapter 18

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.

I did not provide a complete list of target properties in this chapter because doing so might land me in a court room for creating a "hit list." The United States is full of crazy prosecutors who will drag people into a court room for almost anything. Even fanfiction.

-Nikki Little on August 21, 2017


	19. Chapter 19

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." - Karl Marx

Chapter 19: "American Gulag"

I did my morning chore early and crawled into bed. Sleep. Blessed peaceful sleep. I got up at noon to prepare for my four-hour shift at Bill McGill's distillery, and counted the minutes before I could leave and crawl back into bed. Sleep. Blissful sleep. I had forgotten to eat lunch. Didn't care. No appetite for dinner. Didn't care. I only desired to sleep. I slept straight through from that evening all the way until the next morning. I showered, got dressed, and stumbled to the Gnome bar for a breakfast of scrambled eggs.

The Gnome bar had a communal breakfast of scrambled eggs and fresh fruit that was attended every morning mostly by the bachelors among the Gnomes. Cheshire and I were frequent visitors. A radio tuned to one of the three AM stations that could reach Wonderland was almost always playing. Usually a news broadcast.

I walked up to a small table with Cheshire sitting alone, and sat down. News from the radio blared. Cheshire looked up with scrambled eggs smeared all over his face and gave me his classic morning smile and a purr.

"Hello, Cat. Care for some company?"

"But of course," he purred. "Better get your eggs while this batch is still hot."

I walked up to the counter and picked up a plate of eggs and a glass of iced cranberry juice. The news blared from the radio. I wasn't listening really, and only sensed the chaos from the broadcast.

"You've sure stirred up a hornet's nest," purred Cheshire. "It's always been what you do best."

"I already know that Trump is gone. He was on a private jet to Saudi Arabia the last I heard."

"Quite a few state governors have declared martial law to deal with the homeless mobs copycatting what you did to Trump's properties. If there's one person in a mob identified, then National Guard troops are sent in to that homeless encampment to arrest everyone. There are mass arrests of homeless people in close to a dozen states. Doesn't matter if the governor is a Republican or Democrat. Public defenders are trying to plea-bargain everyone into five years in prison for rioting and arson. People are being threatened with life in prison if they go to trial. When rich people's homes are burning, legal rights fly out the window."

"This all happened yesterday while I was mostly sleeping?"

"Yesterday and right now. It's still happening. There's something funny about it all, though."

"What's funny about being threatened with life in prison?"

"None of the states has enough room in the prisons for so many people. I wonder how long it will take the politicians to figure that out."

"Has there been any mention of dragonfly drones operating in the U.S. being returned to their bases?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was listening for that. I thought for sure that Pence would make that one his first orders. Congress is currently tied in knots arguing over CIA operations inside U.S. borders. That's how the media is referring to the dragonfly drones loose inside U.S. borders."

"So it's still unsafe for me uptop."

"Yup. You'd think Pence would be worried about his own family's house. Are you going to do a raid tonight?"

"I'll listen to the weather broadcasts on the radio and look for a place getting drenching rains. The drones can't operate in a hard rain. If everyplace is clear, I may just skip doing any raids. I'm burned out. I can't do two a night anymore."

Cheshire licked the eggs off his face. "Have you ever considered just taking a vacation? Just stop going uptop for a few weeks. Get a full night's sleep. Do some things for yourself. Check out what's available in Hatter's Library. It's quite extensive. Read something. When's the last time you read a book? Hatter often spends evenings in his library reading and drinking tea. He knows how to live."

I listened to the radio blaring from the counter of the Gnome Bar. There were recordings of mobs of demonstrators chanting "Trump! Trump! Trump!" The news announcer mentioned that conspiracy theories were running wild that President Trump had been the victim of a CIA coup d'etat. I looked at Cheshire in amazement.

"People actually think that the CIA got rid of President Trump? Don't they know about Trump turning the CIA and their dragonfly drones loose on me? You'd think it would be obvious who burned all those Trump properties. Who besides me had the motive?"

"Trump's supporters are not well-informed. They don't read newspapers and what little news they get is from FOX."

"All that loyalty after he tried to take their Medicaid away? Trump's diehards are such blithering idiots they take my breath away."

That evening, after finishing from my shift in the distillery and eating dinner in the distillery cafe, I found four five-pound boxes of chocolates on my bed with a note from Arianne.

"Get them out of my sight. Lock them up in your weapons locker. Put them anyplace that has a lock. I don't care. Next time I see Lindsay, I'll tell her to dump her boxes of chocolates on you. I sure don't need them."

I stared at the chocolates, sighed, and opened a portal to my weapons locker. I found an empty space on a shelf and shoved them in. When I returned to my bedroom, I got out my annuals with target pictures and looked at the four volumes that I hadn't used yet. One was of abandoned Soviet sculptures. I found one of an abandoned metal hammer and sickle that was out in the middle of nowhere in Siberia. It was small enough to shove through one of my portals and store in my weapons locker. Good enough.

A quick trip to Siberia and I had my small metal hammer and sickle sculpture. I knew just what to do with it. I wondered if the Russians would ever miss it.

That night, instead of doing a raid, I doused the metal hammer and sickle sculpture in moonshine, found a long pole and a box of matches, and then pushed the sculpture through a portal back to its original location. I went through the portal with the sculpture, matches, and the long pole. Then I lit the sculpture and pushed it with the pole through another portal to the driveway of Mike Pence's home in Indiana. No dragonfly drones came screaming through the portal. The sculpture didn't make a large fire, just a low blaze sort of like a campfire. Photographs of it that showed up on the internet made clear that it was an awesome sight in the middle of the night.

I went back to my weapons locker, ripped open a box of chocolates, washed my hands, and helped myself to a small portion. I was thinking that I could get a cyanide dart in the face at any time. "Live for today," I thought. It took me two weeks to finish that first box. By the end of two months, I had finished all four boxes. My metal fabric suit fit a little tighter, but my clothes all still fit the same as always. Arianne and Lindsay both noticed differences, but I didn't care about the differences. I was tickled to still be alive.

End of Chapter 19

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20: "Return to Havana"

Hatter led the way to the Cuban DI. We both bounded up the steps, swiped our cards, and walked in the front door. No one challenged us. Hatter led me through the hallways to the same office as before. The drone specialist that we had met the last time was busy examining a thick report. He turned to me and spoke in that same flawless international English.

"Welcome back! Before we get to business, can we discuss recent events? I was quite surprised that President Trump abandoned ship so quickly. He could have stayed holed up in that bunker below Washington D.C. with his family until the end of his term."

The entire U.S. federal government - executive branch, legislative branch, and judicial branch - had retreated to a gigantic bunker underneath Washington D.C. back in 2009 after I had thrown the Angel's Sword into the outer wall of the United States Capitol building where the U.S. Senate meets. They were all scared to death of me and maintained very strict security: no cameras, camera-type devices, or anything with a web cam allowed in the bunker. Not a single known photograph or video of the bunker existed, so I had no way in.

"Trump knew that I would burn every property he owned to get him out. He didn't care if I destroyed U.S. government property as it wasn't his, but his own property was a different matter."

"Some of Trump's properties that you targeted had sprinkler systems. And yet they still burned. How did that happen?"

"Sprinkler systems aren't designed to handle arson attacks. They don't handle explosions well, either. A dozen Molotov Cocktails in a dozen different locations in the space of a single minute were sufficient to overwhelm the sprinkler systems. That's why I used a dozen Molotov Cocktails at every attack site. I intended to overwhelm any sprinkler systems that might have been installed. Most of my targets were not commercial properties which might explain why they burned so quickly. Trump knew that it was impossible to protect his properties from me. That's why he abandoned ship so quickly. Apparently it was not acceptable with the CIA for Donald Trump to protect his own personal properties with dragonfly drones. I lucked out. No dragonfly drones came screaming through my attack portals. I was ready to abandon my attack site in the blink of an eye."

"Well, so far, the U.S. government has not announced a withdrawl of dragonfly drones operating inside U.S. borders. They have not announced any cessation of CIA activities inside U.S. borders yet, either. Representatives and Senators are still at each others throats over the issue. Pence has not been sworn in as actual President yet. He's still the acting President. He's been insisting on actual written resignation from Donald Trump."

"Still unsafe for me uptop inside the U.S., then?"

"And possibly in other countries as well. I hesitate to speculate any further."

"Surely no one is crazy enough to send those things into North Korea and risk sparking a nuclear war?"

"Even the Russians have no intelligence available on that. Cross your fingers and pray for sanity."

"What about the dragonfly drones. Anything new to tell me?"

"The dragonfly drones are inactive in darkness because flight drains their batteries quickly. Very quickly. Bright moonlight slows down the drain considerably. The solar paneling in the wings picks up any kind of light. These things can operate in conditions of bright moonlight combined with light from streetlamps. I would say that it's unsafe for you to enter homeless encampments except during a hard, driving rain. Even when there's no moonlight at all, dragonfly drones can maintain battery power with the light from streetlamps."

"I kind of expected that. Solar calculators will work with light from interior lights."

"And now something you never expected. That dragonfly device that you brought in was different from the device that your Hatter described in his lab. The device you brought in had no wireless card for sending or receiving. It had a much larger processor, an iris recognition scanner, and was a completely self-contained artificial intelligence."

I'm sure I had a blank look on my face. Hatter spoke up to explain the significance of what the Cuban drone specialist had just said.

"He's saying that the device we brought in was a robot, not a drone."

"Correct, Hatter," said the Cuban drone specialist. "The device is an assassin robot. Or a 'terminator' if you prefer to use a term from a science fiction movie from 1984."

I'm sure my jaw hit the floor. The Cuban drone specialist slapped me on the back.

"Cheer up! The dragonfly terminators are very easy to defeat. All you have to do is wear these contact lenses with an alternate iris pattern built into the lens to be safe." The Cuban drone specialist pulled a case containing contact lenses and solutions out of a desk drawer. He motioned for me to take them. "Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for the dragonfly drones with human operators. I doubt if there are more than 100 of those, however. The bigger of the two threats to you is easy to defeat."

"If the dragonfly terminators identify me with an iris scan, then that means that the U.S. government has my iris pattern. How could they have gotten that?"

"They probably got it during one of your department store raids," said Hatter. "An iris scan can be carried out from as much as ten feet away. Probably stuck the scanner in front of the chocolate counter."

"Very funny, Hatter! You're so funny!" He was probably right. Saks Fifth Avenue had probably booby-trapped all their candy counters with an iris scanner waiting for me to filch some chocolate. Damn.

The Cuban drone specialist indicated to Hatter that he had no more useful information for me, and Hatter gestured for me to follow him. On the way out, Hatter had a suggestion.

"Let's get dinner here again. I have the convertible pesos to pay. Don't worry!"

Same cafe. Same waitress. When she saw me, I heard her whisper to Hatter, "La gordita, otra vez? Es amor!" I sank down into my chair. The waitress brought me one-fourth of a chocolate cake for dessert without me even asking. Hatter laughed and laughed and laughed.

"Laugh it up, Hatter. Wait until we get back to Wonderland. I'm going to tell Lindsay that you took me out for dinner. Even bought me dessert!"

I grabbed the cake and started eating it. Took me four minutes to finish it. It was kind of dry and had minimal icing. I ate it because it was chocolate. Hatter squirmed and squirmed while I ate the cake. I love it when men are afraid of their wives.

End of Chapter 20

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	21. Chapter 21

"Democracy is a con game... in a truly free nation, no one has to tell you you're free." - Jacque Fresco

Chapter 21: "Dead White Girl"

I never did tell Lindsay that Hatter was taking me out to dinner on our excursions to Cuba. I think she already knew and didn't really mind as she did not consider me to be a threat. When Hatter's birthday rolled around, Lindsay and I got together to give Hatter a unique birthday gift. With Lindsay playing the piano, I serenaded Hatter with Bob Seger's "Beautiful Loser." When I sang the lines about "your oldest and your best friend" who would always "be there again" whenever needed, Hatter burst into tears. He may have had a face from Rod Serling's Night Gallery, but he really was a beautiful soul. Even Lindsay could see that.

After the departure of Donald Trump and his family for Saudi Arabia, Hatter sent Arianne over to Pale Realm for a much-needed vacation. It was a stroke of genius because everyone in Pale Realm ate their meals with the White King at his communal dining hall. There were three meals a day in Pale Realm, and that was it. For Arianne, it was practically a "fat farm." Maybe she would learn how to eat properly again there. According to the Gnomes who worked at Hatter's water treatment plant, Hatter was practically cackling with pride at his deviousness. Lindsay was tickled at his genius too, and even had sex with Hatter without any begging on his part for once.

I gave up boxed chocolates entirely. Two more five-pound boxes of chocolates and I think I would have burst my dresses. Any boxes that Lindsay dumped on me got dumped in homeless encampments. Let the skinny homeless kids eat the fattening chocolates. They needed them. I stuck to half a bar of plain milk chocolate per day. Valrhona, if I could get it.

Acting President Pence did not recall the dragonfly devices. My salvation came from a terrible accident. In one of the largest homeless encampments in California, I spotted a dragonfly hurtling straight toward me and made no effort to determine whether it was an insect or a device. I dropped myself through a portal out of the way and did not return to the homeless encampment. I found out from the news media two days later that there had been a seventeen-year-old girl behind me which was completely unknown to me at the time. I have long tried to avoid having people behind me in homeless encampments. I have had rocks thrown at me a few too many times to be trusting of people I can't see.

The girl got the cyanide dart in the stomach. Now if she had been black or brown, the story probably would have been buried deep in the news section of the New York Times, and only briefly mentioned on cable news. The girl had blond hair, blue eyes, a slim athletic figure, and a face like the young actress Dakota Fanning. It was dead white girl on cable news twenty-four hours a day seven days a week for the next six weeks. Her high school junior portrait was everywhere. Even Fox News jumped on the outrage train.

I suppose I was lucky that the news media didn't blame me for the accident. The drone operator had screwed up. He should have pulled the drone up the instant I looked at it. He should have known that I'd disappear through a portal. It happened on Mike Pence's watch, so he got impeached. Congress ordered an end to all CIA operations taking place inside the U.S. Republicans and Democrats united on this one. Nothing like a dead pretty young white girl to bring everybody together. I could breathe a sigh of relief, but the guilt hung over me like a cloud of mosquitoes in a swampy field.

No one in the homeless encampments seemed to blame me for the accident. Many seemed to recall me lecturing people never to walk behind me. They didn't know the reason why, but they knew I didn't like having people out of my sight around me. Many wrongly assumed that what had happened to the girl was the precise reason why I snapped at people not to walk behind me. I kept quiet about the real reason.

A few months after the dead white girl incident, life for me returned to an uneasy normality. The dragonfly devices were gone, but the political situation that had led to them remained. A new presidential election had been called, and it was obvious, painfully obvious, that the Democratic primary was once again rigged in favor of a status quo candidate. The Democrats had learned nothing from the debacle of the 2016 elections.

I held a few more "cocktail parties" at the mansions of billionaires. I targeted only the billionaires who pushed hard-right politics with avalanches of "dark money." I drove out of the U.S. the horrid funders of the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Watching CNN in tea shops in Britain, I waved good-bye at the TV screens when they and their families were shown boarding flights out of the U.S.

I continued to burn small old Soviet hammer and sickle sculptures in the driveways of billionaire's mansions. It was the one symbol that scared the rich to death. I did spare a few of the billionaires from the burning spectacle in the driveway. Not all of the billionaires were horrible people. The Russians seemed to be amused that I had found a use for their abandoned Soviet-era sculptures.

I did think about what the hammer and sickle represented. As repressive as Soviet-style communism had been, once Stalin was dead, most of the Soviet bloc countries had a better record on human rights than the United States. Nobody starved or went homeless in the Soviet bloc. What had happened throughout Eastern Europe since Soviet-style communism had collapsed proved that western capitalism was worse than Soviet communism. Meanwhile, in Latin America, the Cuban Revolution was still a symbol of hope for the destitute. For Latin Americans, the hammer and sickle was Fidel.

I, myself, was no communist at all. I had long been an advocate of the high-tech Venus Project, but almost no one knew that. I thought that advanced automation should be used for the benefit of all to abolish the ankle chains of money on the human race. In a world of automation-created abundance, there would no longer be any excuse to deny anyone a basic necessity, or even modest luxuries.

I was a realist. I knew that the Venus Project had no hope of ever being brought to fruition in a capitalist society. The rapaciousness of the one-percenters was undeniable. The Venus Project would have to evolve from a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship.

The Trotskyists of the world claimed me as one of their own, and I did nothing to discourage them even if I wasn't one of them. If the rich thought that I was a communist revolutionary, then good. I even allowed the Mexican press to photograph me placing flowers at Trotsky's tomb in Mexico City. It was strictly for show. The more the rich feared me, the better chance I had of being left alone when I led ransackings of grocery stores.

In 2032, the government successfully ambushed me in a grocery store raid. Hatter took me to the emergency room of Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital in Havana with 104 bullet holes in me. Only the rage potion my body produced kept me alive. The first six bullets went completely through my chest before the rage potion made me almost impervious to the rest. Everyone in the world uptop thought that I was dead because I had disappeared for over six months. The year of revolution had finally come, and for that story, dear reader, you'll have to read "Wastelands," because this story of the Dragonflies has finished.

The End

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22: Sources Consulted

From www dot nycsubway dot org

"Station: City Hall (IRT East Side Line)"

From www dot rhizomes dot net slash issue25 slash ferrell slash

"The Underbelly Project: Hiding in the Light, Painting in the Dark"

by Jeff Ferrell

From www dot thrillist dot com

"New York City's Most Insane Abandoned Subway Stations"

By Nina Stoller-Lindsey

From www dot urbanghostsmedia dot com

"10 Abandoned Subway Stations and Forgotten Subterranean Platforms of New York City"

By Morris M

From www dot freetoursbyfoot dot com slash city-hall-subway-station slash

"How to Visit NYC's Abandoned City Hall Subway Station"

By Courtney Shapiro

Wikipedia: Pilot Lights

From Hunker dot com

"Dryers made after 1994 have an electronic ignition to light the dryer for use."

Wikipedia: Slow Sand Filter

From haircolor dot wikia dot com slash wiki slash Hair_Education:_Coloring_over_pre-exisiting_color

"Hair Education: Coloring over pre-exisiting color"

Wikipedia: Molotov Cocktail

Wikipedia: Iris Recognition

An Assessment of the Performance of Automatic Sprinkler Systems

by J. Kenneth Richardson, P. Eng.

From www dot azlyrics dot com

Bob Seger Lyrics: "Beautiful Loser"

From Google dot com

All quotes found using Google search engine

From Google dot com images tab

"Venus Project" - Dragonfly book cover

"Welcome to Hell: The Real America" - graffiti image

"We Own the Night" + Graffiti + New York City - graffiti image

Worth Street Station + New York City - photographs

YouTube Video

"Cascade Barrel House: Live from the Barrel Tapping"

YouTube Video

"Abandoned NYC Subway Stations and Platforms" from "TotalBoogeymenH2Oplus" channel

YouTube Video

"Abandoned Worth Street Station" from "Gritty NYC" channel

YouTube Video

"USA: NEW YORK: "MOLE PEOPLE" SEEKING SHELTER IN RAILWAY TUNNELS" from "AP Archive" channel

YouTube Video

"Abandoned City Hall Station" from "Urban NYC" channel

YouTube Video

""I'm here to chew bubblegum..." iconic scene from the They Live movie" from "Nathan Yoder" channel

Book: "The Mole People" by Jennifer Toth

Book: "Tunnel People" by Teun Voeten

Book: "The Tunnel" by Margaret Morton


	23. Chapter 23

Wastelands

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." -George Orwell

Chapter 1: "The Ruins"

I felt like a damn gargoyle sitting up there. Or maybe the vampire Selene from all those "Underworld" movies. Spread out below me from the window ledge of the abandoned hotel was most of Detroit. The city was a wasteland. There was no other way to describe it. Square mile after square mile of abandoned buildings. Abandoned factories in the industrial zones with weeds growing up through the cracks of empty parking lots. Abandoned skyscrapers in the financial district with their broken windows and ornate revolving doors. The abandoned homes in the residential areas were the spookiest. Half of the homes looked like sure bets to be haunted.

Detroit had no city government. No public services. No police. No fire department. There was no electricity, no water, no sewage. Not a single toilet in the city flushed. The city was so empty that even most of the rats had left. The nearest hospital was more than fifty miles away. Yet there were people here. Inhabiting the upper floors of some of the apartment buildings were squatters. They would catch rainwater in large plastic tubs arrayed on the roofs of the buildings. They grew vegetables in any green spaces nearby. Potatoes, turnips, radishes, and sweet potatoes seemed to be the most common. I saw sorghum growing in some of the larger green spaces. I had learned to appreciate sorghum "popcorn" that was offered to me in homeless encampments throughout the midwest.

The only thing positive I could think of to say about Detroit was that there was nobody there to collect rent. It had been twenty-five years since I had kidnapped the U.S. Senate. The kidnapping had accomplished nothing. Now in 2032, the population had dropped to about 280 million. There had been a die-off among the poor thanks to lack of medical treatment. Medicaid had been cut so many times that the Republicans finally killed it off entirely with little fanfare. Medicare had been replaced with a voucher program that paid for so little that only the upper middle class folk got any benefit. The legal requirement for public hospitals to treat anyone who showed up in the emergency rooms regardless of ability to pay had been eliminated. If you didn't have an insurance card, the public hospitals would let you die in the emergency room. Most hospitals were run by private for-profit medical practices which required all treatments to be preapproved by the insurance companies. The private hospitals were even worse than the public hospitals. If you didn't have insurance, they wouldn't even let you bleed to death in the emergency room: they threw you out onto the sidewalk. The only place left to go was the few remaining Catholic hospitals which were found usually only in a state's largest city. The Catholic Church had struggled to keep at least one hospital open in each state. On the front edifice of every Catholic hospital was the following engraved in bronze: "This hospital treats everyone who enters our doors. None shall be turned away." Since the sex scandals had bankrupted every Catholic parish in the country, there wasn't a single Catholic church open in the entire country. There were a few Catholic school systems remaining in New England. That was about it. The Catholic hospitals were the only remaining presence of Catholicism in most areas of the U.S.

After I had pitched the Angel's Sword into the Capitol Building, the U.S. government moved entirely underground into a bunker that had been built during the "Cold War" with the Soviet Union. The cowards had remained there ever since. There was reputed to be a single way in and out of the bunker, but no one in the public knew where it was. All I needed was one photograph, one YouTube video to create a portal into the bunker. I had been pleading for one for years in YouTube videos, but apparently the underground bunker was so tightly policed that carrying a cell phone inside was certain death. The location of the United States government bunker was the most tightly-held secret on Earth. The Angel's Sword was still stuck in the rock of the remnants of the Capitol Building, its blade still alight. There were sharpshooters located everywhere around it in case I decided to try to retrieve it. People in the homeless encampments had been warning me for years that there were also mines located in the soil within ten feet of the Angel's Sword. I silently pleaded in my mind for the Sword to return to me when I raised my hand within sight of it, but the Sword never returned. Who was it waiting for?

The homeless population was now estimated to be over 25 million. Every state had hundreds of what people had begun to call "Reaganvilles" after the president who had initiated the social darwinist war against the non-rich. It was ironic, in a way, to name the homeless encampments after the actor president: by the standards of the day, he was a liberal. Much too liberal to ever be nominated as a Republican presidential candidate. President Ryan's latest proposed budget cut was the last remaining vestige of the welfare state: food stamps. Those had survived only because farmers constantly squawked that they didn't want to sell their entire crop to foreign buyers. Homeless people weren't eligible for food stamps because they didn't have addresses. There were lots of things homeless people were ineligible for because they lacked addresses: library cards, voting, government employment, camping permits for national parks, fishing licenses, drivers' licenses, demonstration permits, mail service since general delivery had been eliminated, passports, and state identification cards. If you didn't have an address, you didn't exist.

Detroit wasn't the only city that looked like what I just described. Most of Los Angeles, most of Denver, all of St. Louis, all of Cleveland, Ohio, most of New York City, nearly the entire state of New Jersey, most of Houston, and most of Atlanta were also wastelands. Every city had its abandoned industrial zones. The United States looked like a country that had been invaded and conquered. It had been invaded and conquered in a way: the worshippers of Ayn Rand had progressively restricted voting to the point that only the upper middle class and the rich could vote: about 12 percent of the population. For the rest, the United States was a dictatorship.

There were still pockets of affluence in the United States. Spotless gated areas of mansions, manicured lawns, and upscale boutiques. And Trapwire cameras. Trapwire cameras were the state surveillance cameras that lined the streets in affluent areas and combined with private closed-circuit TV cameras inside private shops and residential homes to create an all-pervasive security zone where someone was always watching and ready to dispatch the police or a SWAT team as necessary. Trapwire created a high-tech police state to protect the assets of the wealthy. Ironically, the areas inhabited by the rich had the best public services in the United States. They even had free libraries. The rich lived in a world apart.

After twenty-five years of robbing grocery stores, I was the most hated woman in the United States. And the most beloved. Newspapers in the wealthy areas recorded all my exploits and the cable news channels featured me nightly as the rich cursed my name with gusto. I could walk into any homeless encampment in the United States utterly without fear and unarmed. The homeless kept up a constant vigil for police infiltrators who were hoping to rid the government of its most wanted terrorist with a single headshot. The homeless had discovered a highly effective method of discouraging the infiltrators: they ate them. If you got caught in a homeless encampment with a police-issued pistol, you were dinner.

There were other changes. Business districts had changed greatly in the past twenty-five years. Fast-food chain restaurants had virtually disappeared. Global climate change turned the states of the Great Plains into desert. The Midwest corn belt became arid grasslands suitable only for the growing of sorghum. Other countries lost valuable farmland as well. The loss of so much farmland that had been dedicated to the growing of corn sent the price of corn, which was the primary feed for beef cattle, soaring. Beef became too expensive for fast food. Chicken soared in price, as well. The only fast food chicken chain that survived was Chick-fil-A which came to be considered fine dining. Where you had once seen hamburger restaurants, you now saw little hole-in-the-wall taco joints which filled their tacos with beans and rice and used fish and meat solely as condiments. Department stores had almost entirely disappeared as well. They now existed solely in the gated areas occupied exclusively by the rich. Elsewhere, discount stores were all that existed. Cheapmart ruled the roost. Most shopping malls were abandoned. Kids had once liked to go exploring in abandoned shopping malls, but it became too dangerous because homeless drug addicts who had been kicked out of regular homeless encampments tended to drift toward the abandoned shopping malls. Even I was a bit afraid of the homeless drug addicts. If you disturbed them, sometimes they would burst out of nowhere and come at you will a filthy syringe. I've killed a few of them who tried to attack me. I considered them too dangerous to leave alive.

On the world scene, untreatable forms of malaria had broken loose in pockets along the Amazon river basin, the Congo river basin, and the Mekong river basin. It wasn't just people dying. It was every living animal, both warm-blooded and cold-blooded. These malaria-infested areas had become death zones with only plants and insects still alive, and they were getting bigger with each passing year.

I shifted a bit on the window ledge of the abandoned hotel. I wanted to jump off and float down to the street, but that was too dangerous in this day and age of drones flying overhead just about everywhere in America. I avoided all open spaces easily visible from the sky. I had learned to think like an animal that always had one eye focused on the sky looking out for hawks. The drones no longer carried just cameras. Some of them were armed. The "War on Terror" was now in its thirty-first year with no end in sight. The drones were also being used in the "War on Drugs." There had been several incidents in which drones fired on automobiles being chased by the police because they were suspected of carrying large amounts of illegal drugs. Did I mention that there had been two cases in which a drone fired on a young woman simply because she looked like me and was dressed like me? Short, freckle-faced redheads had learned never to wear dark blue, knee-length cotton dresses for fear of being mistaken for me. The Department of Homeland Security's target recognition software that scanned all images from Trapwire cameras wasn't as accurate as they had been claiming.

I leaned back into the abandoned hotel room and opened a portal to another abandoned hotel two streets away. I had been there before. I found a window and peered out. Sure enough, off in the distance I saw a glint off some small object flying in the sky. The Defense Department had spent fortunes trying to make the low-flying domestic drones blend into the sky, but they could still be seen. Some of the domestic drones were the size of insects and flew at street level. I decided it was time to leave.

I returned to Wonderland and had my lunch with Bill McGill's crew of brewers. I work afternoons at the brewery making my own recipe of walnut brandy and "period" brandy. It's only a few hours and the time seems to go quickly. It's certainly not like working at a regular job in the world above. Bill never breathes down my neck, and no one worries about productivity. We don't produce for profit, and there are no books to keep. We produce for our fellow residents of Wonderland, and trade the surplus in the world above for a few items that we can't produce. "Old Bill's Brandy" is a favorite black-market item among the rich in the world above.

After my shift, I was free for the evening, and returned to my drifting in the ruins of Detroit. Just outside of Detroit's border, I saw a new completed prison. Just what the country needed. More jailbirds. Most of the country's prisoners were drug users and shoplifters. Non-violent offenders. Other countries - civilized countries - might have dealt with drug abuse and shoplifting with referral to social service agencies. The proud, self-righteous U.S.A. just locked them up. There were several states with "Three Strikes Laws" that would put a person in prison for life for three shoplifting offenses. In 2032, the United States had about 21 million people in jail. We had more people in prison at one moment than the entire number of people who had passed through Stalin's Gulag during the entire time of its existence. The Republicans saw nothing wrong with this, although they did occasionally grumble about the cost of the contracts with the private prison corporations that housed most of America's unfortunate jailbirds. Some Baptist ministers in the South occasionally wondered aloud how many of America's governing officials held stock in the private prison corporations. "Are some politicians promoting tough-on-crime legislation because more prisoners equals more profits and more dividends in their own pockets?" Prisons were like wars: the country never seemed to run out of money for them.

I had been leading homeless people in middle-of-the-night grocery store ransackings for basic necessities for around twenty-five years. It was intended as a form of political protest against government indifference to inequality. Not one piece of legislation, not one reform, not even a raise in the minimum wage had been passed in response. In 2024, when Republican voter restrictions finally achieved their aim of pushing the Democrats down into the status of a third party, the Republicans and Libertarians joined to eliminate the minimum wage. It was their idea of a jobs program. It didn't work out the way the economists said it would. The lack of purchasing power on the part of so many people who had jobs helped to push the economy down even further. Businesses need customers. It was that simple. It became obvious that above-market minimum wages were, if anything, providing a small boost to the economy. That's when the prison population and number of homeless people really exploded. That's also when I started to appreciate the foresight of the National Rifle Association that had rabidly resisted any restrictions on gun ownership.

Every large homeless encampment in the country had at least 100 hunting rifles, and a fair number of nasty semi-automatic pistols. There were usually a few old machine guns floating around, as well. I even saw an old Soviet AK-47. The police were afraid to enter homeless encampments because the residents were so heavily armed. There had been several well-publicized shootouts between homeless encampments and police squads attempting to evict them. Thus homeless encampments in 2032 were, for the most part, left alone by police departments. Elected officials had finally decided that the trouble of evicting homeless people from vacant, unused public property such as riversides, and from abandoned industrial zones was not worth the trouble. Meanwhile, deep-down-inside, I had started to question the point of peaceful protest because it had produced nothing positive for twenty-five years. All those guns floating around in the homeless encampments were starting to give me ideas. Terrifying, possibly immoral ideas. I wasn't so sure about right and wrong anymore. Black and white, good and evil, justice, the rule of law, equality of opportunity, citizenship. It had all started to melt in my mind into a terrifying glaze of gray and bright, red blood. Could revolution be justified when the result was likely to be a mass slaughter of innocents?

I went home to sleep for awhile before I started on the night's planned raids.

End of Chapter 1

End of Preview of "Wastelands"

This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights.

Version 3


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